Uncharted

Stephen Few, perhaps the leading expert on all things dashboard design, defines dashboards as follows:

A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance.

I also posed the question of defining a dashboard to the Xcelsius developer community and here is what they had to say in addition to Stephen’s definition:

A dashboard…

“… must deliver a view on highly aggregated data in a fresh, clean & simple design where KPI behaviour can be determined in the wink of an eye.”
– Julien van Bekkum (Twitter)

“… tells a clear story through series of alerts, charts, gauges, etc.”
– Mico Yuk (LinkedIn)

“… is a monitoring system, not a diagnostics system.”
– Dan Everett (LinkedIn)

One interesting insight from these responses is that a good dashboard design is as much about what you show as what you leave out. There is a balance between showing enough information that it’s useful, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming or better suited for another medium, like a report.

Another aspect that many people pointed out is that a dashboard is all about its users – what you show, how you show it, and the types of interactions you enable depend entirely on who you’re designing for. Based on the responses to my question, it sounds like the end users of Xcelsius dashboards seem to be executives, VPs, and upper level managers. They are not business analysts, who would require a more sophisticated analytics tool.

I want to thank everyone that contributed to the discussion on LinkedIn and Twitter. It’s something we all should ask ourselves periodically before setting out on a dashboard design project. There is no definitive answer, but if you decide early on what it is that you are designing, it’ll help you focus on the important aspects and leave out extras that will move you away from dashboard design into another domain altogether. It’s often a fine line between a dashboard and something bigger, but if you keep focus, you’ll provide a much more effective tool that is appropriate for your audience. And if you need more inspiration, read through the full discussion on the Xcelsius Gurus discussion board.