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Visual management plays an important role in everyday life and everyday business, whether this is for sharing information or as a control mechanism, structuring behaviour. Visual management is evident in many organisations and is fundamental to lean with analogue communication boards used by many organisations to meet their visual management needs. Organisations employ analogue communication boards as a visual communication tool to aid continuous improvement, facilitate team meetings, convey information, and improve employee engagement. The overall purpose of this research was to investigate the design of analogue communication boards for group decision-making in a service sector environment, contributing to the theory and knowledge of visual management. This research stemmed from a long-standing interest in visual management initially seeking to discover what research and empirical investigation existed for visual management and visual representations. There is a large amount of literature available for visual management but the existing literature on the design of analogue communication boards is limited and lacking in experimental evidence. The literature also confirmed that most design principles for analogue communication boards are practitioner based. Critical realism has a combination of views that contrast with the positivist and interpretive views. This critical realist standpoint required the researcher to search for the generative mechanisms that will end with an observable event. This research also takes an ontological stance of the existence of an independent reality. Primary research data was collected by the use of laboratory experiments. The laboratory experiments consisted of a business game, set in a real world environment, and semi structured interviews. In total, fifteen laboratory experiments were conducted in an international service sector organisation. The research analysis required the creation of novel visual tools, gesture diagrams and decision timeline, to visualise and give greater insight into the primary research data. Using triangulation enhanced both the richness and validity of the research and supported a generative model of causality. The main findings of the research showed that if consideration is not given to the flow of the visual elements in the design of an analogue communications board the affordance of the board is affected. The actors may become less engaged by trying navigate the visualisation to source information or data to make a decision. Therefore, the visual flow is important to the design of an analogue communication board. Secondly, there was no strong evidence found in the research to suggest that that any one visual format used in the business game prevails over another. Any preference for a particular visual format used in the business game was based upon the participants own situational environment or personal preference. The use of red, amber, and green, status indicators is widespread within the UK service sector but the results from the primary research data here were inconclusive with respect to their use. The participants in the laboratory experiments were divided on their application. It was also shown that the status indicators may obfuscate. This research can act as a starting point for further research and further empirical testing. The advances in technology offer different digital ways of working and this is likely to grow, as digital displays are able to mimic analogue communication boards. There is an opportunity to conduct further research using the laboratory experiments from this research to compare digital and analogue working. To this end pilot trials already taken place using a digital format of the business game by Dr Nicola Bateman, Associate Professor Operations Management at Leicester University (Bateman, 2020).

Objective: The goal of this research was to determine whether alternate-line shading (zebra-striping) of grid-based displays affects the strategy (i.e., “visual flow”) and efficiency of serial search. Background: Grids, matrices, and tables are commonly used to organize information. A number of design techniques and psychological principles are relevant to how viewers’ eyes can be guided through such visual works. One common technique for grids, “zebra-striping,” is intended to guide eyes through the design, or “create visual flow” by alternating shaded and unshaded rows or columns. Method: 13 participants completed a visual serial search task. The target was embedded in a grid that had 1) no shading, 2) shading of alternating rows, or 3) shading of alternating columns. Response times and error rates were analyzed to determine search strategy and efficiency. Results: Our analysis found evidence supporting a weak effect of shading on search strategy. The direction of shading had an impact on which parts of the grid were responded to most rapidly. However, a left-to-right reading bias and middle-to-outside edge effect were also found. Overall performance was reliably better when the grid had no shading. Exploratory analyses suggest individual differences may be a factor. Conclusion: Shading seems to create visual flow that is relatively weak compared to search strategies related to the edge effect or left-to-right reading biases. In general, however, the presence of any type of shading reduced search performance. Application: Designers creating a grid-based display should not automatically assume that shading will change viewers search strategies. Furthermore, although strategic shading may be useful for tasks other than that studied here, our current data indicate that shading can actually be detrimental to visual search for complex (i.e., conjunctive) targets.