Visual Representation of Information as an Antecedent of Perceptive Efficiency: The Effect of Experience

Visual representation of information is ubiquitous, from traditional management reports via dynamic management cockpits to modern 3D and 4D visualizations of `big data'. Little is known about how the perception in terms of efficiency of such a visual representation can be predicted ex-ante. The visualization/task complexity nexus is widely accepted to be a solid foundation of such a predictive model, although evidence points to a variety of additional factors, including data complexity, visual complexity, spatial ability, and experience. While most of these factors can be readily operationalized, the construct of experience is vastly under-researched in this context. In this paper we test the influence of the aforementioned factors on the perceptive efficiency of visualization - given a certain task complexity - by using experiments and structural equation modelling. In addition we look at four different conceptualizations of experience. The adjusted R
²
of the model is 39% and all four proxies of experience are significant at the p<;0.01 level, albeit with some paradoxical findings.