Uncertainty and Risk: Investigating Line Graph Aesthetic for Enhanced Cybersecurity Awareness

Cybersecurity has never been more important than now (during/post-COVID-19 pandemic). In 2020, we experienced a global shift to remote work and many businesses had to adopt new technologies to facilitate this remote operation. With this change, there was not only the increased risk of exposure to new types of cyber attacks but also a lot of questions around how we should deal with these attacks. In particular, how do we present and visualise these new uncertainties and risks to ensure a more heightened cybersecurity awareness. This paper focuses on the use of lines and, in particular, how the advancement in the aesthetic of the line could afford enhanced cybersecurity awareness. The results from a large study showed the influence of design element colour and design principle emphasis to portray intuitive visual warnings of uncertainty. Moreover, we found that the use of unanticipated colours paired with aesthetic qualities can afford a stronger impression of dangers and risks as opposed to those conventionally associated with danger. In terms of cybersecurity visualisations, these findings show that advanced line aesthetics have the power to nurture a heightened cybersecurity awareness. Furthermore, portraying the potential to encode further warnings and information into cybersecurity visualisations that employ the use of lines (i.e. force directed graphs).