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Dashboards have become a popular means to present important information. Everybody wants one, but not always for the right reasons, and often with little clue as to what is needed. Like all new means of business intelligence (BI) delivery, dashboards are surrounded by hype and confusion. Once you clear the fog, however, something substantial remains that can deliver genuine benefits worth pursuing.
Dashboards provide a distinct and powerful means to communicate information, with specific benefits, but they also pose a specific set of design challenges. Very few dashboards today come close to realizing their potential achievements. This is because very few dashboard designers (or even dashboard vendors) have fully understood, appreciated, and responded to the unique challenges and opportunities of dashboards. In their rush to bring products to market, eager to capitalize on the popularity of dashboards, many software vendors have cobbled together pieces of existing products with bailing wire and loads of spackle. Caught up in the race to out-gizmo one another, few have taken the time to gain more than a superficial understanding of effective dashboard design. Without this knowledge as a foundation, dashboards are destined for the BI trash heap.
If something is worth communicating, it is worth communicating well. This article introduces keys to designing effective dashboards.
Dashboards Defined
New fads in the BI space are often nothing more than new packaging of something that already exists under a different name. Dashboards relate to several technologies and approaches to information delivery and use that preceded them.
Remember the Executive Information Systems (EIS) that emerged in the 1970s? Their intent was to provide executives and managers with an integrated view of the information needed to manage the business. Despite a great deal of interest in the concept, it was just too hard in those early days of computing to build effective solutions without the advances in processing power, database technology, and data warehousing methodology that arrived in later years.
Some people currently use the terms EIS and dashboard synonymously, but this is misleading. Dashboards can be used to achieve the promises of EIS, and in this respect they are related, but they are not the same.
Another term that is often used synonymously with dashboard is portal, but once again...