Dashboards by Example
    Digital Dashboard Examples & Best Practices.   From Excel Dashboards to Enterprise Business Intelligence, these dashboards contain KPIs, metrics, charts, trends and data visualizations. Learn the best practices of enterprise dashboard design by studying the work of your peers on business dashboard implementation teams around the world. Examine their digital dashboards and share your dashboard design tips in return.

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Dot-Com Flight Simulator Dashboard - a blast from the dot-com past

This enterprise dashboard or business cockpit is a true historical gem.  It hails from back-in-the-day when the dashboard metaphor was taken literally and graphics were rudimentary.

The dot-com boom didn’t make me rich, but then again, the dot-com bust didn’t make me poor either. I do have an interesting remnant from those days though. Did you ever hear of an enterprise dashboard from Accenture called the Dot-Com Flight Simulator Dashboard? It was a tool used during outrageously priced consulting gigs back then to determine how much “value” a start up would generate. I’m sure that this little dashboard did its share in fueling the hype and hopes of the era. Read up on this Accenture methodology and take a look at this screen. The underlying concept was based on the value of the “network effect”. The graphics aren’t much to look at, but remember, this was in the era of cocktail napkin business plans.

Enterprise Dot-com flight simulator dashboard

Tags: Early Enterprise Dashboards, Mock-ups

Homework: Please read the following paragraphs from the Malik book on dashboards and be prepared to discuss it:

The term dashboard brings to mind that panel under the windshield of avehicle that contains indicator dials, various compartments, and controlinstruments. Its beauty lies in its functionality. It brings together all of therelevant data and functions within easy accessibility to the driver. It allowsus to monitor important, even lifesaving data while performing the vitalday-to-day task of driving. In addition, it provides an ease of use and com-fort so as to make the multitude of decisions necessary during the drivingtask almost automatic, and certainly effortless. For corporate decision makers, the amount of data that must be monitoredand analyzed on a given business day is anything but effortless. Huntingthrough spreadsheets, calling in elite information specialists, and experi-encing costly delays in the synthesis process—managing information isbecoming more complicated by the day. Certainly, the time has come for a new vision of the dashboard that will meet the needs of today’s businessprofessionals. The term dashboardhas acquired a vibrant new meaning in the field ofinformation management as leading organizations worldwide embrace theidea of empowerment through improved real-time information systems. Inthe current corporate vocabulary, a dashboard is a rich computer interfacewith charts, reports, visual indicators, and alert mechanisms that are consol-idated into a dynamic and relevant information platform.

What really happened during the dot-com era? Check it out with these books on the dot-com boom and bust.

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 on business dashboards.

PS: If you find yourself part of an enterprise dashboard effort, you must study Enterprise Dashboards: Design and Best Practices for IT, the only book on actually implementing enterprise dashboards.

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Last Modified: Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 @ 13:56

This business intelligence dashboard blog entry was posted on Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 at 4:33 am and is filed under Dashboard Screenshots. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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