Designing Information Visualizations for Strategic Planning - Platforms An Iterative Research Project Generating Information Visualization Design Guidelines and Concepts By Investigating the User Experience

Abstract

In strategic planning software, one of the problems is how to visualise the great amount of data available in a manner that provides an overview and increases the user experience. In this project, we have attempted to find new ways of visualising the data in Stratsys, a company providing a strategic planning software to several Swedish municipalities and companies. Through literature studies, user research and iterative work with ideation, prototyping and evaluating of concepts, we have found two proposed concepts for new visualizations to be used within Stratsys platform, as well as a compiled list of information visualization design guidelines to be used while designing for a strategic planning platform. The compiled design guidelines are based on the takeaways from the evaluations conducted throughout the project and they serve to answer the research question: Which design principles, leaning on novel and well-known research on information visualization and transitions, can support overview and comprehension of large amounts of data in a strategic planning platform?. Thereby, we provide a set of guidelines on designing information visualizations for strategic planning platforms with a focus on finding, understanding and getting an overview of large amounts of data.