Experimental study on the relationship between the harmony and cognitive load of business intelligence dashboard color combinations

Abstract The color combination is an important factor affecting dashboard visual design and is key to triggering the operator's visual harmony and emotion. However, in the actual design process, the relationship among the different color schemes of a dashboard and the operator's harmony, pleasure, and cognitive load has not been effectively analyzed. To solve this problem, two methods, questionnaire measurement and eye movement tracking, were used to evaluate the effects of 24‐color combinations under four‐color schemes of a dashboard by analyzing the changes in color harmony, pleasure, eye movement indicators. The four schemes were red–yellow–blue, green–purple–orange, blue green–blue purple–yellow green, and red orange–yellow orange–red purple. The research results show that the degrees of color harmony and pleasure show a positive correlation. Cognitive load is not affected by color harmony. The larger the amount of information, the higher the cognitive load. This research can be used as a reference when designing and optimizing the color scheme of a business intelligence dashboard.