The Influence of Color and Graphical Information Presentation in a Managerial Decision Simulation

Abstract

A laboratory experiment was conducted to assess the influence of graphical and color-enhanced information presentation on information use and decision quality in a simulation setting. This is the third in a series of studies examining the effects of colors and graphics in a managerial decision-making task. The findings reported in this article indicate that graphical presentations are more useful when evaluating information in order to determine promising directions in the search for an optimal solution, but when the task requires the determination of exact data values for computational purposes, graphical reports are less useful than tabular ones. Benefits of color include taking fewer iterations to complete the task. However, these benefits are associated more strongly with the graphical report as indicated by the significantly higher use of color-enhanced graphical reports over monochromatic ones. The benefits of color are also restricted to the early stages in the decision task, with color graphic report usage dropping sharply over time.