Dashboard Design

According to Stephen Few, every dashboard should have a clearly designed purpose.  This is so basic I'm sure I don't need to mention it . . . on the other hand, sometimes it is possible to get so excited about creating this "flashy" thing, that not enough thought is put into what is the purpose, as you can see at the end of this post, I've made that mistake.

Effective design begins with questions.  Here is a short list of questions which, according to Few, are common to getting started in the design with most dashboards.  Note, this is not an exhaustive list and I refer you to his book mentioned in a previous post.

• How frequently should the information be updated?
• Who will use the dashboard?  Is it for a single person, a single group, or people in several different departments?
• What will the dashboard be used to monitor, and what objectives will it support?
• What questions should the dashboard answer?  What actions will be taken in response to these answers?
• What specific items of information should be displayed on the dashboard? What does each of these tiems tell you and why is that important?  At what level of summary or detail should the information be expressed to provide the quick overview that's needed?

Few lists a few more questions in the book which are also useful.

Interestingly he says a dashboard is not a report and it is not a tool for exploring and analyzing data - it is an information display to keep relevant parites aware of what's going on in their specific realm of concern.

This was a new thought for me.  I realized dashboards weren't reports, but I hadn't thought about them separate from tools for exploring and analyzing data.  I think I have been confusing the two and need to go back and provide some better answers to the questions above.