The promise of the next generation of rich user interface dashboards is that with zero training a dashboard user can intuitively perform deep analysis across various dimensions. The data sets will be huge, but the performance will be fast and the user interface feedback will be instant. Too much to hope for? No, the future is now with the latest rich UI techniques such as Flash, Flex, AJAX, Xcelsius and the upcoming new Excel 2007.

The dashboarding gurus at brightpoint have just released their latest data dashboard on their dashboard gallery. This Flex-based dashboard is quite impressive. As told to me by their chief Dashboard Spy:

"This is a data dashboard that allows for deep dimensional analysis against 60,000 records of data with little or no user training. The goal of dashboard is to show what products are selling and what products are generating profit. The dashboard is aggregated by Product Category/Sub Category/Model Name and allows user to graphically track sales and profits across both the "Internet" and "Reseller" channels."

I've captured some dashboard screenshots. The interactive demo requires the latest Flash player beta download, but is well worth the trouble. The demo is done with Flex 2.0 Beta and ActionScript 3.0. Give it a try and see if the claim of "little or no user training" holds up.

Here are two views of the data dashboard. The first screenshot shows some of the drag and drop functionality. The second shows the data view that you get to when you use the dashboard-data radio button.

Homework: Do you know what Flex 2.0 is? Now that Adobe has purchased Macromedia, you'll see a really big push on Flex. If you need a backgrounder on this exciting rich UI technology, do a web search. There is also an upcoming Flex 2.0 book.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy's favorite books.

Here is a performance dashboard screenshot that is full of information critical to sales and marketing departments. It has plenty of good metrics and KPIs like win/loss ratio, sales pipeline, top performers, lead status, pipeline, compliance and top performing media.

The information gathered is good. However, the interface leaves me shaking my head. I’m sorry to say it, but this is an example of what NOT to do. I’m about to rant now, so look out. I have a pet peeve about the literal use of the dashboard metaphor. It was fun and perhaps even instructive for the users to grasp the concept, but only for a brief period back in the early days of the business dashboard. Note that the date on this dashboard screenshot is 2003. Dashboards as a concept were around for a long enough time by then that the use of an automotive dashboard graphic theme was inappropriate and amateurish. I believe that this dashboard product is still in existence so some poor users are still driving their business like a driving video game. Please correct me if I am wrong and send me some updated dashboard screenshots to show me that the product has been updated.

Why show an actual steering wheel in your dashboard? It “drives” me crazy. Dashboarding has grown up and users “get it”. No need for heavy-handed use of the dashboard metaphor. For fun, I think I will look for other steering wheels in executive dashboards. If you have any screenshots, please send them to The Dashboard Spy.

PS. IF you want to see one that implies the metaphor without showing the actual steering wheel, go to the Virginia DOT Dashboard.

Homework: I know that graphic design doesn’t come easy for most technical people or business users. If you are on a dashboarding project and have some input on the design of the dashboard, you must study up on the basics of graphic design before you weigh in. Start with the book titled The Elements of Graphic Design: Space, Unity, Page Architecture, and Type. As one amazon reviewer states: “I am a software developer by trade, but I also do graphical design for user interfaces and web sites. I can’t afford to absorb a large amount of material on this subject just to extract the essentials. This book is exactly what I need. The book is short, sweet, loaded with excellent examples and it teaches many of the essentials in an easy, enjoyable manner.”

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s favorite books.

I found this French dashboard screenshot, but all I have is an image and no accompanying context. It looks to be about utilization rates of electricity and gas among EU nations, but I'm not sure of the point of the screen. Can a French-speaking Dashboard Spy please parse this and provide some insight? Thanks.

Update from a Dashboard Spy with a French accent:

"It’s about the theoretical and actual openness of the electricity and gas markets per country in the EU.
in the EU, you are supposed to have the same choice of utility supplier as you are supposed to have on your DSL in the US.
The first column is the theoretical openness of the market – whether a customer can change supplier of their utility.
The second column is the % of large customers who have actually changed. “moins” is “less than”. "

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy's favorite books.

My fellow Dashboard Spies know how much I like real-world, physical dashboards. Here's one from the Coachella Valley Music and Film Festival. It is a poster board mounted at various chainlink fence checkpoints backstage. Since there are so many event types and participants, it can be difficult for security agents to remember what areas the various ID bracelets entitle wearers to. Using this dashboard, the security agent can match each bracelet type to the picture and description and allow or disallow access. A check means entry is permitted and an X means entry is denied. Think of this as a real-world Access Control List with associated entitlements. Neat.

Homework: Event security is no joke in this day and age. Take a look through these books and articles on special event security.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy's favorite books.

A fellow Dashboard Spy sent me these dashboard screenshots of a school district's system used to manage user disk storage. The idea is to create a virtual "locker" for each student to house their data on the school network. The management of the users and their storage details is done through a series of dashboards.

In this first dashboard screenshot, we see a list of users and red/green/yellow status lights.

Storage statistics are presented in this dashboard view using pie charts:

Event statistics and health status links lead to the following dashboards:

Defining the users is always a major part of the system. Here is a view of that aspect:

Statistics are charted in reporting dashboards such as this one:

Homework: The use and administration of technology in our school systems is a whole topic in itself. Browse these books on classroom technology. If you are involved with academic adminstration, don't miss this book on effective school district management. It's a valuable self-evaluation.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy's favorite books.

Mind mapping and balanced scorecards? What is the connection? It’s always interesting to look at what people are coming up with to improve upon old techniques. The idea of the Balanced Scorecard is about as established as they come. How about looking at it in a new light? Here is some balanced scorecard work by AKS-labs. As you see they have combined mind mapping with balanced scorecards. The first screenshot shows a typical mind-mapping diagram. The other screenshots show a Strategy Tree and a Scorecard for a particular idea. Visit the site for a full explanation of these screenshots.

By the way, did you know that according to the Financial Times, the Balanced Scorecard technique has been adopted by 80 percent of large U.S. companies as of 2004, making it the nation’s most popular management tool for increasing performance? I believe that enterprise dashboards will see similar usage numbers in the future.

Homework: Not sure what mind maps are? Take a look at the wikipedia definition of mind mapping. Here is a book on the subject . Also, flip through these free pages of books on balanced scorecards.

Also, here is an excerpt to study from the Malik book on enterprise dashboards:

The following are the contemporary thoughts of industry leaders within
the business intelligence space:
We honestly believe that the BI of the past was really designed for a subset
of users in an enterprise who understood deep analytics, the PhDs in analytics.
But our view is you can’t solve business problems unless we move
[BI] closer to the user, and that is where our investments are going.
—Karen Parrish, VP of BI Solutions, IBM3
In 5 years, BI will be as ubiquitous as spreadsheet and word processing today.
—Bernard Liautaud, Chairman and CEO, Business Objects4
As visionaries and business intelligence (BI) industry leaders predict such
ubiquity of BI, dashboards would be just as ubiquitous as the new face of BI.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s favorite books.

When we last looked at the enterprise dashboards in the demo area and gallery at Dundas, we complimented the  design sense behind the dashboards. The marketing director wrote back with praise and pride about his team of designers. Here we look at more of their gorgeous work – their marketing dashboard demo. It's an interactive demo, so you should visit the site to try out the dropdowns and such, but here are a couple of dashboard screenshots.

This enterprise dashboard for the marketing team starts off with a summary page. Reporting period and products are selected via dropdown boxes. The featured chart is a funnel that tracks the stages of a sale – website vist, evaluation download, valid contacts, qualified leads, quotes and closes. The chart on the right shows Revenue vs. Marketing Cost. The KPIs shown by the guage controls are cost per sale, sales per download, revenue per sale and profit per sale.

Here is the marketing costs tab which is a dashboard that tracks marketing expenses such as magazine ads, web banner advertising, trade shows, direct mail, etc.

This is the Web Banners tab.

This is the dashboard focusing on the website:

Homework: Tracking the success of marketing efforts is difficult. Beyond the cost of the various efforts, there is the challenge of how to measure success. An enterprise dashboard is perfect for such a project. Learn more about marketing metrics by browsing through these books on marketing KPIs. In particular, flip through the free preview of this book: Marketing Metrics: 50+ Metrics Every Executive Should Master. As the review states: "The authors show how to use a “dashboard” of metrics to view market dynamics from multiple perspectives, to maximize accuracy, and to “triangulate” to optimal solutions. You’ll discover high-value metrics for virtually every facet of marketing: promotional strategy, advertising, and distribution; customer perceptions; market share; competitors’ power; margins and pricing; products and portfolios; customer profitability; sales forces and channels; and more. For clarity and simplicity, this book avoids advanced math: all calculations can be performed by hand, or with basic spreadsheet techniques.Marketers now recognize the importance of metrics, but few understand the breadth, depth, or power of the metrics now available to them. In Marketing Metrics, four leading researchers and consultants systematically introduce today’s most valuable marketing metrics, showing exactly how to use them to maximize marketing ROI and identify the best new opportunities for profit."

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy's favorite books.

This role-based enterprise dashboard shows tailored views to the various parties involved in the management of a construction project. In this example, an assisted living facility is under construction and this dashboard screenshot shows the project manager's view. The schedule performance statistics are featured on the upper left. It has the basic red/yellow/green status icons but with a twist. There is also a blue star which means exceptional. One might guess that there may be contractual incentives to finish early, so the need to draw extra attention to early completion of tasks.

Also of note on this dashboard is the Project Webcam where you can actually get a view of the building under construction. To round out the page features, there are the more usual portlets such as milestone status, issues, vendor turnaround times and submittals.

Homework: Construction management is a pressure-packed field with millions of dollars riding on scheduling and sourcing issues. If you need a primer, browse the pages of these books on construction management.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy's favorite books.

Tags: Construction Project Management Dashboard, Project Dashboard, Construction Management

When Office 2007 comes out, the impact on casual, do-it-yourself dashboards, will be huge. Out of the box, Excel 2007 (Excel 12) will have some serious dashboarding capability. We will see a new wave of Excel-based dashboards that look like the screenshot below.

This article discusses the impact on IT departments of the new Excel. In it, the author focuses on the fact that "Spotting trends or out-of-the-norm values is likely more important to your users." and that the new Excel has serious capabilities in that regard. He goes on to say:

"The most significant improvements in Excel fall in the area of data visualization. In the new release, a colored gradient in cell backgrounds can be used to represent a cell's value. The higher the value, the longer the bar. Excel 12 gives you the ability to create your own dashboards. Traditionally, the three-color traffic light (red, yellow, green) has been a popular way for end users to spot problems. Now traffic lights—and a variety of other graphics, such as arrows—are available in Excel 12, and you can define the intervals each colored light is assigned."

In the dashboard screenshot below, green lights represent values over 67% of the maximum, yellow for values between 33 and 67 percent, and red for those less than 33 percent. These intervals are user adjustable, and you can base indicators (traffic light colors, arrow directions, or whatever icon you choose) on values in addition to percents.

Another significant change is in the Excel controls. Here is a screenshot of the toolbar "ribbon" used for pivot tables.

Homework: Don't underestimate the impact on the dashboarding landscape that Excel 2007 will have. Also, as this is a significant upgrade, the training impact will be high. Keep an eye on these upcoming books on Excel 2007.

Tags: Excel Dashboards, Dashboard Screenshots

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy's favorite books.

PC components like to have their dashboards too. Here are a couple of little dashboard screenshots from various Dashboard Spies desktops that show the status of a computer's cpu. The application is called the AMD Cool n Quiet Dashboard and was bundled with their Athlon 64 processors starting around summer of 2004. The utility graphically shows processor Voltage, Load, and Percent of Max frequency using dial-type gauges.

Homework: Want to learn about CPUs? Start with these books on computer CPUs.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy's favorite books.