Visualizing the application of filters: A comparison of blocking, blurring, and colour-coding whiteboard information

Through a mixed-design experiment we compare how emergency-department clinicians perform when solving realistic work tasks with an electronic whiteboard where the application of information filters is visualized either by blocking, colour-coding or blurring information. We find that clinicians perform significantly faster and with less effort and temporal demand when using the blocking interface. However, we also find that the colour-coding interface provides clinicians with a better overview of the information displayed by the electronic whiteboard. The blurring interface did not perform as well as previous research has shown and we discuss the differences between these results and ours. Finally, we find that the clinicians worked much less in parallel than we had expected and discuss the reasons for this.