The development and deployment of dashboards is picking up in corporates. Everyone wants one to ease decision-making and planning, while executive management is demanding that leaders use dashboards to understand strategy and business performance more intimately. In addition, hastening the processes to gather information for presenting and reporting is another pressing requirement. Driving adoption is the ability of dashboards to deliver complex information in a simplified format. This is not a simple exercise, however.
"Executives are well aware that depending on isolated, uncontextualised information can result in flawed decisions," explains Jonathan Nell, Visual Intelligence Manager of Leaderboard, an information visualisation solution provider.
"Information that offers a wider view of the organisation and an understanding of what affects or drives end results is much preferred. Yet the quantity of available data makes presenting `dense` information to users clearly - without blurring the ability to comprehend key issues - a considerable challenge."
Designers can follow one of two possible strategies to present data: dense or sparse. Using a sparse strategy, the designer will only put a few measures on the screen and provide controls to let users switch from screen to screen to see certain sets of information. Using a dense approach, the designer will display as many measures as possible on one screen. Thus, many sparse screens are combined into a few dense ones. Both strategies have merit. The question is when to use which?
"Density lends itself to ease of comparison and a context rich information environment that allows the viewer to see emerging patterns and identify problems or opportunities," explains Nell. "Sparse dashboard designs, on the other hand, are ideal for specialised users that need to see only a few key indicators at any one time.
"If the dashboard is meant to present very high level information for executive decision-making, for example, the supporting information will usually consist of higher level summary information and less detail," he notes, "but the level of drill-down provided will depend entirely on the purpose of the dashboard."
Effective design
An effective business dashboard is one that is aligned to the user`s role and supplies relevant information that empowers the user to make more effective decisions. The design must take into consideration the user`s responsibilities and priorities. A simple formula can be followed to ensure the dashboard contains the correct level and density of information to meet the user`s information requirements.
"The foundation for the dashboard`s design is set by the selection of key performance indicators (KPIs)," explains Nell. "KPIs are usually a composite of target and actual measures of performance of a business initiative or key components thereof, and are directly linked to the purpose of dashboard and the role of the user. These metrics are the single most important pieces of data on the dashboard and will set the context for the visualisation of all other data.
The data that will assist the user to diagnose the condition of any given KPI then needs to be identified and, if essential, be included as a chart, graph or table within the dashboard. It is also this data that - if the dashboard package is advanced enough - will assist the user with planning and analysis by enabling `what-if` scenarios to be applied.
KPIs can best be visualised by use of, among others: alert icons that can be colour or shape-coded to indicate the condition of the KPI; trend icons that show the performance of a KPI over a period of time relative to the target outcome; progress bars that use scale, colour and threshold limit indicators; and gauges, which are highly visible visual devices that work well for depicting dynamic values that change frequently.
Data used to support KPIs can be depicted using pie charts, bar charts, line charts, tables and lists. Each of these elements lend themselves to different types of information. Line charts, for example, are good for comparative trend analysis.
Decisions around size, contrast and positioning will determine the ultimate layout of the elements on the dashboard - and its relative success in imparting information effectively. "The most important information - the KPIs and their current performance - must grab the viewer`s attention at first glance," says Nell.
"Size, contrast and position all play a direct role in determining which visual elements will grab the user`s attention first, while positioning is important to create an association between visual elements." A group of elements that are more important than the rest may, for example, be proportionally larger, he adds, and elements that contain changing information that may become critical may be colour-coded to alert the user on the reaching of identified thresholds.
"Each dashboard is unique," Nell concludes, "and design considerations must, first and foremost be directed at achieving the purpose for which the dashboard is being created. Whether sparse or dense, a dashboard is in the end only as good as the quality of the information it contains and the extent to which it assists the user to fulfil his or her responsibilities more effectively and efficiently."
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