Enabling Managerial Decision Making: The Use of Multiple Views in Dashboards

Abstract

A very useful way to enable decision making among overloaded managers is to represent data visually in graphs, trends, bar charts, maps etc. Graphical representations are superior to textual information when it comes to trends, correlation and other quantifiable information but only if the encoding of such information is both appropriate to the data, and uses an optimal dashboard design. Several review studies find that the management literature has failed to keep pace with the developments of dashboards, and that no agreement exists on how exactly a dashboard should contain (e.g., number of views) and what it should do. Thus, to apply visual representations efficiently and effectively still represent key challenges for creating value and enabling dashboard use in B2B settings. In this paper we experimentally test the efficiency, effectiveness, subjective preference among participants, and physiological gaze fixation count/time across two dashboard settings, one with three-view inserted and one with nine-view inserted. We use questions as well as eye-tracking measures. We find effects pointing to superiority of the nine-view dashboards for some tasks while the three-view dashboard performs better on other tasks. We discuss the implication of these findings in managerial decision making.