Education Level and a Computer-Based Performance Dashboard Prototype for a Major Delivery Company

The two main objectives of this study were to: (1) evaluate the usability of a major delivery company computer-based performance dashboard design and (2) identify education level differences in user task performance and dashboard usability assessments. Both college educated and non-college educated participants were recruited to complete 15 tasks on a dashboard prototype under time constraints. The dashboard was divided among 5 user roles, and 3 tasks were assigned for each role. Participants also completed the VARK (Visual, Aural, Reading/writing and Kinesthetic) Questionnaire to identify their learning styles and a Computer Experience Categorization tool to categorize them as expert, intermediate or novice computer users. After-task usability questionnaires and an open-ended questionnaire were used to acquire usability ratings from participants. This study suggested that college educated participants performed better than non-college educated participants on dashboard-related tasks. Expert computer users rated the dashboard as more usable than did intermediate computer users.