"The Worst Weather In America": Augmenting the Information Design of Extreme Cold Weather Forecasts

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Correll, Michael, Broccolo, Jay, Bush, Drew
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Correll, Michael
Broccolo, Jay
Bush, Drew
author_facet Correll, Michael
Broccolo, Jay
Bush, Drew
contents Mount Washington is home to extreme, and extremely volatile, weather conditions. Consulting a weather forecast of conditions at the summit is vital for making one's visit as safe as possible. Using the discussion and suggestions arising from a participatory workshop as input, we test a design intervention employing color-coded hazard icons to function as visual summaries of Mount Washington Observatory's current text-heavy forecast through a crowd-sourced study. We find that the use of icons increases the perceived risk of activities involving visiting the mountain. However, we highlight remaining questions around visualization design and design ethics that warrant further study in the domain of how best to communicate cold weather hazards in ways that are mindful of the diversity of literacies and experiences of visitors.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_25818
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle "The Worst Weather In America": Augmenting the Information Design of Extreme Cold Weather Forecasts
Correll, Michael
Broccolo, Jay
Bush, Drew
Human-Computer Interaction
Mount Washington is home to extreme, and extremely volatile, weather conditions. Consulting a weather forecast of conditions at the summit is vital for making one's visit as safe as possible. Using the discussion and suggestions arising from a participatory workshop as input, we test a design intervention employing color-coded hazard icons to function as visual summaries of Mount Washington Observatory's current text-heavy forecast through a crowd-sourced study. We find that the use of icons increases the perceived risk of activities involving visiting the mountain. However, we highlight remaining questions around visualization design and design ethics that warrant further study in the domain of how best to communicate cold weather hazards in ways that are mindful of the diversity of literacies and experiences of visitors.
title "The Worst Weather In America": Augmenting the Information Design of Extreme Cold Weather Forecasts
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.25818