Visual Knowledge Transfer between Planners and Business Decision Makers A Framework for Knowledge Visualization

The transfer of knowledge between planners and business decision makers can be improved when planners combine traditional visualizations with business knowledge visualizations. Today architects and urban planners use visualization methods such as sketches, diagrams, drawings, renderings, models and animations to illustrate their projects. While spending an enormous amount of time to illustrate a project, almost no time is used to illustrate business relevant information that decision makers need (i.e., revenue models, risks, return on investments, project phases). Consequences are information overload, misinterpretation or even misuse of information. Juxtaposing the visualizations that planners and decision makers use reveals a major gap: Both groups use different visualization types and are not familiar with the visualization types of each other. This paper stresses the importance to expand the visualization types of planners with business knowledge visualizations. First, it discusses the functioning of visual representations for the transfer of knowledge. Second, it introduces a general knowledge visualization framework. Third, it illustrates examples from an innovative office that improved knowledge transfer with decision makers in urban planning projects. We found that combining traditional visualizations with business knowledge visualizations reduces the information overload, prevents misinterpretation, increases the information quality, improves communication and as a consequence improves decision making. We found that decision makers pay extra for these visualization types, which therefore is a new source of income for planners. The results have implications for the education of future architects.