Patent ID: 7620566

Claim:
A method for providing decision support through the visualization of participant past performance, the method comprising: retrieving, by a computer associated with an electronic marketplace, stored past performance information for a plurality of participants reflecting performance of the participants in connection with one or more previous transactions conducted using the marketplace, wherein the past performance information for a participant comprises a time to complete each phase of a transaction cycle having a plurality of phases, each phase corresponding to a particular subdivision within each viewable object, the length of a subdivision reflecting the time to complete the phase corresponding to the subdivision; generating, by the computer, a plurality of substantially linear viewable objects for display to a user, each viewable object corresponding to a particular participant and comprising one or more subdivisions each defined by first and second subdivision boundaries, each subdivision in a viewable object corresponding to a past performance measure and having a length that is proportional to a value of the past performance measure determined according to the retrieved past performance information for the particular participant corresponding to the viewable object; receiving, by the computer, user input selecting a particular past performance measure; and aligning, by the computer, the first boundaries of the subdivisions corresponding to the selected past performance measure, such that the past performance of the participants with respect to the selected past performance measure can be readily visually compared by the user in connection with a marketplace decision.