DTMi – A New Interface for Informed Navigation

We introduce an interactive, dynamic visualization aimed at improving navigation in complex systems, including but not limited to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Users of these types of industrial behemoths are typically presented with a multilayered menu structure for navigating the various task interfaces. The vast number of options and paths tends to overwhelm users rather than encourage system exploration. Experienced users prefer memorizing transaction codes that take them directly to the page for that task, leaving them with a fragmented understanding of how tasks fit together. The Dynamic Task Map with information (DTMi) addresses these issues by providing an interactive, dynamic mapping of the tasks supported by the system and the connections between them. A laboratory evaluation involving an earlier version of this interface, referred to as DTM, revealed that users were at least twice as fast at finding transactions with DTM than with a standard SAP interface and were correct nearly twice as often in their answers to questions concerning those transactions. Outcomes from that study, including feedback from participants, led to improvements that were incorporated into DTMi. In this paper, we present this new interface, describe how it extends the earlier version, compare it to alternative approaches, and discuss our plans for user evaluations and future research in this area.