Choosing Knowledge Visualizations to Augment Cognition: The Managers' View

Abstract

Growing evidence in the scientific literature and in organizations shows the positive impact of employing conceptual visual representation for individual reasoning, communicating and facilitating meetings in organizations. 116 managers responded a questionnaire on the usefulness of 12 common business visualizations for typical knowledge tasks in organizations. The resulting ranking provides an overview of the comparative suitability of visualizations for generating ideas, sharing knowledge, evaluating options and planning. The findings can be used by organizations for evaluating visual templates as a support for specific knowledge tasks. Theoretical implications include the relationship between the structure level of knowledge visualization forms and convergent/divergent task type. Further implications for theory and practice are discussed.