Measuring dashboard performance.:Optimizing the view on data

Due to the recent technological advancements in data collection, transmission and storage, the amount of data that is available in private or publically accessible databases is growing exponentially. In principle this data may enable individuals and organizations to make well-informed decisions and timely adapt to changing conditions. However, as datasets increase in size and complexity, it becomes more and more difficult to explore the data, select the relevant information, perceive patterns and interpret the data correctly to make the right decisions. Efficient and effective information visualization tools that allow a user to explore and understand the data in an intuitive manner may serve to achieve this goal. Dashboards are promising candidates for this purpose. Dashboards are graphical user interfaces consisting of different components, that organize and present information in a way that is supposedly easy to read and comprehend. The overall quality of dashboards depends on the quality of their components and the synergy between them. Because of their inherent complexity, determining the overall quality of dashboards is difficult. We are currently developing a framework to evaluate and optimize the performance of dashboards. Such a framework will enable the design of efficient and effective dashboards that provide users with an intuitive view on data. www.humanfactors.n

Subjective User Experience and Performance with Active Tangibles on a Tabletop Interfaces

We developed active tangibles (Sensators) that can be used in combination with multitouch tabletops and that can provide multisensory (visual, auditory, and vibrotactile) feedback. For spatial alignment and rotation tasks we measured subjective user experience and objective performance with these Sensators. We found that active feedback increased accuracy in both tasks, for all feedback modalities. Active visual feedback yielded the highest overall subjective user experience and preference scores. Our contribution is that active feedback improves subjectively perceived performance and reduces perceived mental workload. Additionally, our findings indicate that users prefer to be guided by visual signs over auditory and vibrotactile signs