Between informative and esthetic: A user study of content and visualization on government data dashboards

This preliminary study aims to explore users' perceptions of and experiences with using government dashboards, accomplished by conducting experiments and interviews with eight participants. The results reveal that participants prefer information related to their lives and the government's performance on data dashboards. Confusing jargon on data dashboards is an obstacle that prevents users from understanding data visualizations. We also found that effective conveying of information does not always correlate with participants' preference of a data dashboard design. This study also suggests that participants are unclear about the role of government dashboards.