How Colors in Business Dashboards Affect Users' Decision Making

Business dashboards help users visually identify trends, patterns, and anomalies in order to make effective decisions.1 dashboards often use a variety of colors to differentiate and identify objects. Although using colors might improve visualization, overuse or misuse can distract users and adversely affect decision making. Eye tracking enables researchers to measure a subject's eye movements while reading text or viewing a picture. The involuntary and voluntary responses of eye movements reflect the internal processing of information. When reading, our eyes make rapid movements to shift attention from one part of a display to another, then remain almost motionless while the brain interprets the material at that location. The periods in which the eyes are motionless are called fixations, which can be used to measure the attention individuals pay to the viewing object. Recording eye fixations can revealthe amount of information processed. A longer fixation duration might indicate difficulty extracting information from the displayed area. Eye-tracking software marks a specific area of the dashboard in order to identify the viewer's eye movements in that area.