Abstract
With the advent of mass customization, global financial markets, and Internet-based business models, executive decision making has an increased need for speed, scope, and accuracy. To meet these needs, IT vendors have created executive dashboards, systems that display visualizations of critical data via interfaces that pull from corporate data warehouses. While the visualization techniques they use take advantage of the latest technology and may support complex data analysis, these systems often fall short because they do not match the schema of the decision maker nor do they support situation assessment or awareness. A design process that considers a more naturalistic decision making perspective and uses cognitive engineering techniques such as ecological interface design would provide a significant improvement to the design of executive dashboard interfaces. However there are several challenges to applying current cognitive engineering methods to the executive decision making domain. This paper will present the executive decision making domain, illustrate how cognitive engineering principles are necessary for the design of executive dashboards, and present some methodological challenges to applying these principles.
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