FinVis: Applied visual analytics for personal financial planning

FinVis is a visual analytics tool that allows the non-expert casual user to interpret the return, risk and correlation aspects of financial data and make personal finance decisions. This interactive exploratory tool helps the casual decision-maker quickly choose between various financial portfolio options and view possible outcomes. FinVis allows for exploration of inter-temporal data to analyze outcomes of short-term or long-term investment decisions. FinVis helps the user overcome cognitive limitations and understand the impact of correlation between financial instruments in order to reap the benefits of portfolio diversification. Because this software is accessible by non-expert users, decision-makers from the general population can benefit greatly from using FinVis in practical applications. We quantify the value of FinVis using experimental economics methods and find that subjects using the FinVis software make better financial portfolio decisions as compared to subjects using a tabular version with the same information. We also find that FinVis engages the user, which results in greater exploration of the dataset and increased learning as compared to a tabular display. Further, participants using FinVis reported increased confidence in financial decision-making and noted that they were likely to use this tool in practical application.