Dashboard and Scorecard Design
General Principles of Dashboards
Dashboards have been around in some form or other since the 1980s in the guise of an Executive
Information System (EIS). The name has changed and the
underlying tools have become more complex
and capable, but the purpose is the same.
Dashboards and scorecards are essentially the same, with the "balanced scorecard" concept trying to take
the bias out of business management by having some KPIs from all components of a business.
Simplistically, the major purpose of a dashboard is to display important information for the operation
of a business. Ideally the data displayed should be well defined so that any person within the business
would interpret the numbers in the same way. The display should also be unambiguous in terms of the format,
colouring, scaling and style of graphs. The intention is to convey information. This must always be remembered.
Often the simplest dashboard are the most effective. The most effective dashboards are those that can be
displayed on one screen (or page) and show the most important information to the business that will enable
it to be successful. See our online demo
for some dashboard examples.
Dashboards in all levels of a company
Dashboards are not just for the senior management of a company. Equally well there can be departmental
dashboards built around the objectives of a department. For example a call centre in an insurance company
could have its own dashboard displaying important figures that are specific to their business.
Dashboard components
There are many components that can be used in a dashboard, with many varieties and versions of each.
Here are a few.
- Tables - tables typically display numeric data and are effective for data that is disparate in type
- Line Graphs - these graphs are particularly appropriate for displaying data that is related in time
- Bar Graphs - these graphs are very useful for displaying categorical data
- Pie Charts - there is a lot of debate over he usefulness of these as dashboard components, as usually there
will need to be a separate legend or scale applied elsewhere, making this graphs slower to interpret
- Traffic lighting - this typically shows green (good), amber (OK), red (bad) statuses against targets.
These are very useful in quickly showing the overall 'wellness' of a business
- Maps - for geographical data these can easily show relative sales by colouring different counties with
different colours to show good/bad sales against targets.
Dashboards and KPIs
Recently with the focus on performance measurement through
key performance indicators (KPI), dashboards and
KPIs have become almost synonymous. This is unfortunate as dashboards are only one mechanism for KPI presentation.
Further to that, some important information that could appear on a lower level business dashboard are things like
a list of high priority customer issues that need resolving.
Dashboard mistakes
In our experience,
we have found that the best meaning designers of dashboard make consistent mistakes. The most common are:
- Clutter - the more items on a dashboard, the more likely it is that important information will be missed
- Too many colours - the more colours, the less likely that important changes in colour will be missed. Issues with colour blindness needs to be born in mind
- Relevancy - having more data that is not important detracts from the important data
- Large graphics - many dashboards waste space by using large 'dial-like' images that take a lot of space but don't give much informational value
Read more about our case studies.
Please
get in touch with us to assess your requirements.