Purpose – The increasing amounts of data has become an important factor for organizations. A visual dashboard is a BI tool that can be used for communication of insights from big data. One way for individuals in organizations to get insights from timely and large data sets is through visualizations displayed in visual dashboards, but studies show that most of them fall short of their potential. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine how individuals make use of visual dashboards. Design/Methodology – To obtain this understanding a literature review was performed, followed by a study conducted in two phases. Firstly, a multiple-case study of four organizations was performed, which included interviews and the think-aloud technique. Secondly, the findings from the multiple-case study were tested through interviews with experts in the BI area. Findings – The findings indicate that low democratization, scarce effects, and simplicity are reasons for why the use of visual dashboards is not fully exploited. Low attention and understanding combined with a lack of timely information means that data-driven actions are not taken. The phase of predictive analysis has not yet been reached, rather organizations are still using the visual dashboard for descriptive analysis, which in turn hinders the possibility for effects. For these reasons the use of visual dashboards does not meet the often described purpose to make better and faster decisions, and organizations are still to take steps in that direction. Research limitations – The sampling of industries in the multiple-case study could affect variables as number of KPIs.

Nowadays, a massive amount of cybersecurity data-objects, such as security events, logs,messages, are flowing through different cybersecurity systems. With the enormous fastdevelopment of different cloud environments, big data, IoT, and so on, these amounts of data areincreasingly revolutionary. One of the challenges for different security actors, such as securityadmins, cybersecurity analysis, and network technicians, is how to utilize this amount of data inorder to reach meaningful insights, so they can be used further in diagnosis, validation, forensicand decision-making purposes. In order to make useful and get meaningful insights from this data, we need to have efficientdashboards that simplify the data and provide a human-understandable presentation of data. Currently, there are plenty of SIEM and visualization dashboard tools that are using a variety ofreport generator engines to generate charts and diagrams. Although there have been manyadvances in recent years due to utilizing AI and big data, security professionals are still facingsome challenges in using the visualization dashboards. During recent years, many research studies have been performed to discover and address thesetypes of challenges. However, due to the rapid change in the way of working in many companies(e.g. digital transformation, agile way of working, etc.) and besides utilizing cloud environments,that are providing almost everything as a service, it is needed to discover what challenges are stillthere and whether they are still experiencing the same challenges or new ones have emerged. Following a qualitative method and utilizing the Delphi technique with two rounds of interviews,the results show that although the technical and tool-specific concerns really matter, the mostsignificant challenges are due to the business architecture and the way of working.

A learning analytics dashboard (LAD) is an application that illustrates the activity and progress of a user in a self-regulated, online learning environment. This tool mines source data to provide meaningful information that supports decision making and positively impacts learning behaviour. Research on this topic explores how learning activities and pedagogical goals are impacted by integrating LADs into learning and/or teaching environments. Currently, the majority of the research is centred around predicting student academic performance and identifying students that are at risk of failing. The popularity of integrating technology into educational practices has led to the adoption of LADs into learning management systems (LMS) or massive open online courses (MOOCs). The objective of this paper is to develop a concept for a standalone prototype LAD, for an Introductory Statistics course (STA 1000), to be potentially integrated into the University of Cape Town's (UCT) LMS, Vula. The dashboard aims to create and incorporate meaningful visualisations, that have the potential to primarily assist students as well as educators. Visualised information in the LAD aims to positively impact students to enhance and drive effective learning, which could consequentially aid educators. Additionally, the dashboard will aim to provide actionable feedback, derived from predictive modelling and course analytics, that positively impacts learning behaviour and identifies factors that the student could most effectively use to leverage their chances of passing and improve academic performance. Predictive analytics aim to identify academic factors, that a student has control over, such as course assessments and engagement variables, at certain time points in the academic semester and provide a useful course of action at those time points. Other than variables measured throughout the course, the predictive modelling takes certain prior academic information into consideration.

The benefits of being able to receive individualized guidance to support learning have been shown in various studies. However, most teachers are too pressured by time and budget constraints to be able to offer this. Thus, personalized learning has become a luxury that most teachers cannot provide. However, with the rapid development of digital technologies, new opportunities are arising within this field. Scalability challenges are being overcome when digital learning platforms now can collect data and use it to generate insights concerning each student’s individual progress and challenges for the teacher to access through a dashboard. The aim of this case study is to contribute to the formation of a best practice for the design of teacher-facing dashboards (TFD) to improve learning outcomes. A user-centric approach was selected to identify obstacles and areas of improvement. These were identified by conducting interviews and think-alouds to evaluate an existing dashboard designed by the language platform Astrid Education. The results and insights are demonstrated through a redesign suggestion of the dashboard along with the teacher's evaluation of it. / Många studier har påvisat positiva effekter på lärandet när språkundervisningen är anpassad till den studerandes individuella behov. Ändå har språklärare sällan möjlighet att erbjuda ett individanpassat stöd för varje elev på grund av tids- och budgetbegränsningar. Tack vare teknikens utveckling har nya möjligheter skapats inom lärandeformer. I allt större utsträckning övergår utbildning till digitala läromedel vilket medför en tillgänglighet till information om elevers kunnande och prestation. Denna data kan sammanställas och presenteras för lärare för att erbjuda en djupare förståelse för varje elevs behov. Syftet med denna studie är att bidra till bildandet av bästa praxis för dessa dataöversikter för lärare, sk. teacher-facing dashboards (TFD) med avsikt att förbättra resultaten inom språkinlärning. En användarcentrerad designmetod valdes för att identifiera begränsningar och förbättringsområden i en digital lärplattform för engelsk språkinlärning tillhörande Astrid Education. Testanvändare intervjuades och observerades. Resultat och insikter demonstrerades genom ett designförslag tillsammans med lärares utvärdering av denna.

Onlineundervisningen på universitet runt om i världen har ökat drastiskt i och med Corona pandemin och det bidrar till att kraven på studenters förmåga att strukturera sitt lärande ökar. Den fysiska interaktionen mellan lärare och studenter saknas och digitala hjälpmedel är därför av intresse. De flesta universitet använder sig idag av lärplattformar för att förmedla kursmaterial till studenter. Tidigare studier visar att ‘learning dashboards’ kan motivera och ge studenter bättre insikt i hur de ligger till i kurser samt möjliggöra självreflektion för att på så sätt hjälpa studenten att agera vid behov. Däremot visar tidigare studier att även om det existerar flertalet ‘learning dashboards’ så är de flesta inte anpassade för studenters behov utan med lärare som huvudanvändare. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur en ‘learning dashboard’ för studenter integrerad i en lärplattform ska vara utformad för att främja studenters lärande och upplysa om deras lärandeprogression. Vi ämnar även undersöka vilka indikationer på deras lärandeprogression som studenter anser är av störst relevans i en dashboard.  Baserat på tidigare forskning utformades en low-fidelity prototyp av en ‘learning dashboard’ integrerad i lärplattformen Canvas, som sedan utvärderades med think aloud tester och semistrukturerade intervjuer. Resultatet av studien visar att det finns ett stort intresse av en ‘learning dashboard’ som ger en överblick av ens progression i kursen men att det är av vikt att den är synkroniserad med kursinnehållet och integrerad i en befintlig lärplattform. Studien visar också att det finns mer att undersöka kring vilka visualiseringar som är bäst lämpade beroende på vilken information som ska förmedlas. / Online education has grown rapidly in universities all over the world due to the corona pandemic and with it, the demand on students' capability to structure their learning grows. There is an absence of physical interaction between students and teachers and therefore digital aid is of interest. Today, most universities are using learning management systems to provide course materials to students. Previous studies show that learning dashboards can help motivate and give students a better insight on how they are performing in courses and enable self-reflection, which can help the students to take action when needed. Recent studies also show that several learning dashboards exist, however, most of them are adapted for teachers and not for the students' needs. The purpose of this study is to examine how a learning dashboard integrated in a learning management system should be designed to promote students’ success in learning and enlighten them about their learning progress. We also aim to examine which indicators of their learning process the students think is of highest relevance in a dashboard. Based on previous studies a low fidelity prototype of a learning dashboard integrated in the learning management system Canvas was designed and then evaluated with think aloud tests and semi structured interviews. The result of the study shows that there is an interest in a learning dashboard that gives an overview of the progression in the course, but it is of importance that the dashboard is synchronized with the course material and integrated in an existing learning management system. The study also shows that there is more to examine about which visualizations

Learning Analytic Dashboards have proven to help students reach their academic goals by tracking their study data to offer feedback. However, current dashboard research focuses on traditional education, such as schools and universities, rather than emerging educational sectors like coding boot camps that have different curricula and structures. Based on literature research and user experience methods, an interactive prototype was designed to help boot camp students track "hard skills" and "soft skills." Design experts and boot camp students evaluated this prototype to provide feedback about its usability and effectiveness. The study found that the students appreciated the focus on learning goals instead of tracking metrics like home completion rate or exam grades. At the same time, the polished user interface kept the students engaged. The contribution to the Learning Analytics field is the demographic data of boot camp students in Stockholm through user personas, recommendations to avoid common dashboard limitations, and suggesting ideas for further evaluation / (Note: This is a Google Translation, i will write the final one, after the abstract in english is approved) Coding boot camps är snabba program som hjälper människor att få jobb inom IT genom att lära dem hur man kodar. Ändå är det inte alla studenter som får jobb efter examen på grund av de olika kunskapsnivåerna. Learning Analytic Dashboards har visat sig hjälpa elever att nå sina akademiska mål genom att spåra deras studiedata för att ge feedback. Men aktuell instrumentpanelforskning fokuserar på traditionell utbildning, såsom skolor och universitet, som har olika läroplaner och strukturer. Därför undersöker denna avhandling frågan om "Hur man designar en instrumentpanel för det speciella fallet med boot camp-studenter?" Baserat på litteraturforskning och metoder för användarupplevelser designades en interaktiv prototyp för att hjälpa eleverna att spåra "hårda färdigheter" och "mjuka färdigheter". Designexperter och boot camp-studenter utvärderade denna prototyp för att ge feedback om dess användbarhet och effektivitet. Den här studien drar slutsatsen att instrumentpaneler för startläger bör prioritera mätvärden för lärandemål i stället för att spåra mätvärden som slutförandegrad av hem eller provbetyg, integrera studentfeedback i de tidigare stadierna av designen och leverera ett polerat användargränssnitt för att hålla eleverna engagerade. Avhandlingen uppmuntrar framtida forskning genom att tillhandahålla information om studentdemografi i Stockholm, Sverige, genom användarpersonas, designrekommendationer och föreslå idéer för vidare utvärdering.

Det finns mängder av dashboards ute i världen idag och i detta arbete försöker jag ta fram några designprinciper för att ta fram en dashboard som är tänkt att främja transparens och överblick och i slutändan även produktivitet.

Involving end-users in system development processes has proven to be critically important for a successful system. This is because a successful system must fulfill the needs of end-users and generate value for them. However, involving the end-users can be challenging and require a large amount of resources. This paper intends to study how end-users are involved in the development processes, whether the needs are met and what challenges participation encounter within a public organization. The methods of choice for data collection are interviews with developers and analysis-owners, as well as a survey for the end-users. This study's result shows that end-users are primarily involved through the analysis-owner, who acts as a representative for the end users. The study also shows that there are many respondents who are satisfied with Power BI in general, that it is easy to use and is useful in their profession. The challenges that were noticed are time resources, development methods and evaluation. Our ambition is that this study can be used for further development within the studied organization.

This dissertation consists of three related studies examining the diffusion of digital dashboard technology throughout today’s organizations. Dashboards, once reserved for the executive level, are now available to managers at the lower levels of the organization. For these managers, dashboards have become an integral part of their work life to support their decision environment, to provide consistency in measures, to monitor performance, and to communicate information throughout the organization. Prior research in the practice literature has shown that dashboards improve managerial performance and organizational performance as well as communicate organizational goals and objectives; however, empirical research has not been conducted in this area to confirm this anecdotal evidence. Using three theories, the phenomenon surrounding the diffusion of dashboards to the lower levels of the organization are examined based on 1) dashboards as a source of interactive management control and strategy alignment, 2) the impact of dashboard quality on strategy alignment, decision environment, and performance, and 3) the impacts on dashboard utilization from the antecedents of information content and task uncertainty and the consequences of user satisfaction and managerial performance. The first study investigates why dashboards have been diffused to the lowers levels of today’s organizations. The primary focus of this study is to develop an understanding about the extent of dashboard utilization by decision-makers and the antecedents and consequences of utilization that is responsible for the widespread acceptance of this technology. The data for this study is collected and analyzed through an explanatory cross-sectional field study utilizing a semi-structured questionnaire. Using data from interviews with 27 managers, a framework is developed that indicates strategy alignment and dashboards associated with interactive iv management control are the primary antecedents that drive dashboard diffusion. The dimensions of dashboard system quality and dashboard information quality mediate the relationship between an interactive dashboard and the extent of dashboard utilization, which leads to higher levels of managerial performance and organizational performance. This study contributes to the dashboard, strategy, and MCS literature by revealing that dashboards are not isolated technologies, rather they play an important role in the execution of strategy at the operational levels of an organization. In addition, dashboards can also function as an interactive management control, which leads to high levels of diffusion of dashboards throughout organizations. Prior strategy literature has examined strategy alignment at the higher levels and this study extends this research stream by investigating strategy alignment at the lower operational levels of the organization. The second study utilizes the IS Success Model to explore the impacts of the antecedents of dashboard system quality and dashboard information quality on the managerial decision environment in addition to the resulting consequences or ‘net benefit’ of managerial performance and organizational performance. A field survey is used to collect data from 391 dashboard using managers to enable the analysis of the relationships predicted in the theoretical model. The theoretical model is analyzed utilizing PLS. The results show that two dimensions of dashboard quality, system flexibility and information currency, have a positive effect the managerial decision environment. The model indicates support for the consequences of managerial performance and organizational performance resulting from higher levels of decision quality in the managerial decision environment. The model also reveals that when the dashboard measures are strategy aligned, lower levels of dashboard system flexibility are associated with improved v managerial decision environment. Therefore, when organizations design their dashboard systems to support strategy alignment, managers should not be afforded high levels of system flexibility to maintain their attention on the key performance indicators selected to align with strategy. This result is a primary contribution to the strategy literature that reveals that strategy aligned dashboards are more effective in environments where the dashboard flexibility is lower. Additionally, study two also extends the strategy literature by examining strategy alignment at the lower levels of the organization, since prior research has concentrated on the higher level strategic outcomes. As dashboards become highly diffused and more managers utilize the technology, the likelihood that dashboard designers cannot provide dashboard content that fits the tasks performed by managers is higher. The third study investigates this fit between dashboard information content and task uncertainty to understand if the fit between the technology and task impacts the extent of dashboard utilization by managers based on the theory of task-technology fit (TTF). TTF predicts higher levels of utilization will increase user satisfaction and managerial performance. Data is collected from 391 managers that utilize dashboards in their weekly work life to analyze the relationships predicted in the theoretical model. PLS is utilized to analyze the theoretical model and indicates weak support of TTF impacting the extent of dashboard utilization. The model supports the hypotheses for the links between the extent of dashboard utilization and user satisfaction and managerial performance. Based on the weak findings from this theoretical model, a second model is developed and analyzed. The second model measures TTF through the mediation of task uncertainty between dashboard information content and the extent of dashboard utilization, while the first model measured TTF through interacting task vi uncertainty and dashboard information content. The results of the second model show strong support that TTF, as measured through mediation, increases the extent of dashboard utilization. This study contributes to the literature by empirically showing that more extensive levels of dashboard utilization are achieved through the antecedent of TTF, resulting in increased managerial satisfaction and managerial performance.

BACKGROUND: Maternal mortality remains a persistent public health concern in Sub-Saharan African countries such as Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Ministry of Health has made it a priority to improve maternal health outcomes within the country. Health information technology (HIT) solutions are a flexible and low-cost method for improving health outcomes and have been proven beneficial in low-to-middle income countries, like Ethiopia. The aims of this dissertation were: (a) to characterize the use of HIT usability evaluations in Africa; (b) to quantify facility clinical readiness for obstetric emergencies; (c) to explore the obstetric emergency supply chain dynamics and information flow; (d) to create a visualization dashboard to monitor obstetric emergency readiness; and (e) to evaluate the usability of the dashboard. METHODS: This dissertation comprised six studies with a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods: (1) a scoping review of the literature to identify the types and timing of HIT evaluations occurring in Africa; (2) a prospective, cross-sectional, facility-level comparison of obstetric emergency clinical readiness in Amhara, Ethiopia as measured by the Signal Functions and Clinical Cascades methods; (3) qualitative semi-structured interviews to gain an understanding of the current supply chain in the region, communication flow, and the current barriers and facilitators to success; (4) a case study summarizing the process for the development of the dashboard prototype through integrating existing technology, current literature, and qualitative interview findings; (5) user-centered design sessions with individuals who interact with the obstetric emergency supply chain to create an electronic dashboard prototype to monitor facility readiness to manage obstetric emergencies; and (6) expert review of the dashboard including sessions with a domain expert and information visualization experts and a heuristic usability evaluation with human-computer interaction experts to evaluate and improve the ease of use and usefulness of the prototype. RESULTS: The scoping review found that many usability evaluations in Africa lacked theoretical frameworks to support their work, and that most studies occurred later in the development process when the HIT was close to implementation in practice. The quantitative analysis of facility readiness found that many facilities were missing critical supplies for managing obstetric emergencies and identified a 29.6% discrepancy between the Signal Function tracer items and the Clinical Cascades readiness classifications indicating that the former, which is recommended by the World Health Organization, overestimates facility readiness. The qualitative interviews identified several locations within the current obstetric emergency supply chain where barriers such as bridging the gap of data availability between facilities and regional hubs could be addressed to improve overall facility-level readiness and pointed towards a dashboard as a potential solution. Once a prototype dashboard was developed, user-centered design sessions refined the terminology and colors that should be used throughout the dashboard screens and identified critical graphics and data elements that users believed should be included. Following domain and visualization expert review and iterative refinement of the dashboard, human-computer interaction experts rated the dashboards highly usable. CONCLUSIONS: Dashboards are a novel method for promoting facility-level readiness to manage obstetric emergencies. By exploring the existing supply chain and including targeted end-users and experts in the design process the author was able to tailor the dashboard to meet user needs, fit into the existing integrated pharmaceutical logistics system, and ensure that it follows best practices. Consequently, these studies contribute to strategies to address maternal mortality in Ethiopia.