Displaying Background Maps in Business Intelligence Dashboards

Abstract

Business data in geographic maps, called data maps, can be displayed via business intelligence dashboards. An important emerging feature is the use of background maps that overlap with existing data maps. Here, the authors examine the usefulness of background maps in dashboards and investigate how much cognitive effort users put in when they use dashboards with background maps as compared to dashboards without them. To test the extent of cognitive effort, the authors conducted an eye-tracking study in which users performed a decision-making task with maps in dashboards. In a separate study, users were asked directly about the mental effort required to perform tasks with the dashboards. Both studies identified that when users use background maps, they required less cognitive effort than users who use dashboards in which the information on the background map is represented in another form, such as a bar chart.