An Empirical Classification of Visual Methods for Management: Results of Picture Sorting Experiments with Managers and Students

This paper presents an empirically derived taxonomy of managerial visualization methods by reporting on the results of picture sorting experiments with a total of 65 participants (37 students and 15 experienced and 13 young managers). Participants were asked to group 30 thumb nailed images of visualization- based methods based on their spontaneous judgments of similarity. By conducting an average cluster analysis on the resulting similarity matrix (based on a pair-wise analysis of group co-membership), an overall classification system emerged from the participants´ groupings that revealed salient classification attributes as well as insights into the grouping rationale of students and (junior and senior) managers. As a main result, we present a dendrogram of thirty visual methods and its limitations due to biases in the perception of the participants, diagram novelty, and due to ambiguous conventions employed in some diagrams. In addition, we present a list of salient grouping attributes used by the participants. These attributes, as well as the derived guidelines, can be used for future classification systems in the area of managerial visualization methods.