3D Mixed Reality vs 2D Visualizations: Decision Support for Comparing Financial Data

Abstract

In the financial world a lot of decision-making has to be made based on the different types of data. Although 2D visualization has proven to be useful for decision-making, it still have difficulty comparing multiple large data. Therefore we searched for new and innovative 3D technology and came upon 3D mixed reality.

This research explores the effectiveness of mixed reality visualization in comparison to traditional 2D visualization when selecting an optimal investment strategy. In order to select the optimal investment strategy, users need to compare different portfolios. However, before users can compare the portfolios, they have to find the relevant data and understand the data as well.

For this research we have designed a 3D version of an existing 2D financial decision support system OPAL. We also incorporated various mixed reality interaction into the 3D visualization to help users find relevant data faster. The virtual 3D space of mixed reality was used to give users a bigger viewing space for better comparison of data. To verify our work, we tested users’ ability to perform the three tasks with both the 2D and the 3D visualization. The mixed reality HoloLens was used to view the 3D visualization. We measured the speed, accuracy and user confidence for each question they answered. Each question is related to one of the three tasks. We conclude that the overall difference in performance of the 2D and 3D visualization were minimal. The received feedback shows that participants prefer the 3D visualization over the 2D visualization OPAL. The 3D visualization is according to participants enjoyable and fun to use. Furthermore, the 3D visualization also have a higher accuracy in finding relevant data compared to 2D visualization. The mixed reality interaction was not as intuitive as we had initially thought, but participants believe that with better instructions and training that the 3D visualization could surpass the 2D visualization in helping users making better decisions.