The Dashboard Spy

Those of us who have done dashboard projects in multiple industries know that the first step is to understand that vertical’s particular workflows, business rules and measures of performance. Finding out what KPIs to display on the enterprise dashboard for a particular type of business is no easy task unless you have first hand knowledge of that industry. Most consultants called in to implement a business dashboard don’t really know the industry first hand and must rely on the client’s subject matter experts. That is fine, but the dashboard vendor or consultant must do as much preparation in studying the client’s business as much as possible in advance. Yes, your particular expertise may be in dashboarding as a horizontal service, but as nice as your dashboard looks and works, it will not succeed if it doesn’t measure the right things.

For anyone involved in healthcare-related performance dashboards, here is a great primer on the workflows for a hospital. This is from a vendor named statcom and, while it is a sales and marketing tool, it does offer plenty of value-add and education for us dashboarders. It is offered as an interactive flash hospital workflow and patient flow simulator.  I’ve grabbed a couple of screenshots of the demo as well as the different executive dashboards involved:

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Topic: UI Design Methodologies - a look at designing Executive Dashboards and Excel 2007

User interface design methodologies, whether for enterprise dashboards or software packages, should follow the same basic steps and principles. Of course, they should be user-centered to ensure that the needs of the end user are kept foremost in mind, but the design methodology should also allow for exploration of current best practices and design influences. This is especially true in software applications where being on the cutting edge is a selling point.

My typical design steps for dashboards or any other type of user interface are:

1) Understand the User Requirements

2) Survey the landscape of existing design solutions to identify best practices

3) Explore solutions with low fidelity mockups

4) Wireframe scenarios for user feedback

5) Create high fidelity interactive prototypes

6) Iterate through this cycle of envisioning before proceeding to development

Does this methodology work? Yes. Do dashboard design teams follow it? Obviously not! A recent comment by a Dashboard Spy reader rings true - After viewing the collection of executive dashboards at enterprise-dashboard.com, (no easy task - as there are 1000 dashboards there) , the reader stated his reaction bluntly - that, quite simply, the designs of current dashboards are awful. (more…)

From this post about a media convergence dashboard comes an interesting screenshot showing a fascinating use of an executive dashboard as part of an interactive television type of experience. Can enterprise dashboards replace TV? Take a look at this dashboard screenshot. Sorry for the small size - visit the source dashboarding blog directly for a much larger screenshot.

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An Excel Dashboard: Dashboard Spy reader Andreas Lipphardt of microcharts.net has been working on some nice excel dashboards that monitor website traffic and use sparklines to provide  analysis. He kindly documented some of his excel dashboarding processes and has provided you Dashboard Spy readers with the main content of this post.  Thank you Andreas. Let’s start by having a look at the enterprise dashboard itself:

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I just came from an enterprise dashboard project kickoff meeting where the business sponsor for the dashboard gave me an edict that I really enjoyed. She said to make the dashboard “sexy and cheap”. When I stopped laughing and asked what she meant, she pointed me towards her latest interest - web-based mashups. She follows examples of dashboard mashups (Programmable Web) and encouraged me to do the same. Take a look at this sample mashup - census demographics dashboard:

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That’s a loaded question, of course, because we have to break down what we mean by enterprise dashboard design. Depending on who you talk to in the business intelligence application world, the word “design” means different things. Talk to a data visualization expert like Stephen Few and you’ll walk away with a mission to properly design the data presentation elements like graphs, charts and indicators such that information is fairly and accurately delivered. (more…)