Monthly Archives: June 2008

Small Business Dashboards

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Several readers of Dashboards By Example have reminded me that the objective of the blog, as the name suggests, is to show actual examples of dashboards. It’s nice to see the cutting edge visualizations and hear about the theories behind software usability, but they want to see more real business dashboards from the trenches. “Let’s have some real dashboards!” is the message.

Thanks for the feedback! Let’s get back to real world executive dashboards and the KPIs used by management to keep tabs on their businesses.

Today we have three examples of dashboards used by small business owners. Designed using InfoCaptor, a dashboarding tool from Nilesh Jethwa, these dashboards surface data from QuickBooks.

This first screenshot is used by the owner of a landscaping company. Click on the image to enlarge it and you’ll see metrics such as Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), Sales by Period, Sales by Product and Top Customers.

QuickBooks Dashboard

Continue reading by clicking on the “See More” link and you’ll find 2 other small business dashboards.

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The Horizon Graph

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Should you have a Horizon Graph for your dashboard? When a new information visualization technique is invented, it’s interesting news. The ones that are worthwhile find themselves in our mental toolboxes and eventually on our dashboards. Sparklines, bullet graphs, treemaps come to mind as recent inventions of note.

When a new infomation visualization technique comes out and is lauded by Stephen Few, however, then it becomes not just interesting, but important! Stephen Few, author of Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data, is the developer of the bullet graph and considered one of the leading experts in the use of data visualization for analyzing and presenting quantitative business information.

Let’s have a look at a Horizon Graph. Click to enlarge the screenshot of the chart:

Horizon Graph Example

What???? That’s my initial reaction and I bet it’s yours too.

Let us allow Stephen Few to explain what we are looking at. First some background:

As Steve explains in his latest newsletter titled Time on the Horizon, the Horizon Graph was invented by the business intelligence software vendor Panopticon.

This is not a marketing piece for Panopticon, so I’ll say little about the company except that until recently its products exclusively featured a particular visualization called a treemap. For information about treemaps, I invite you to read an article that their inventor, Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland, wrote for my newsletter back in April 2006 titled “Discovering BI Using Treemaps.” The folks at Panopticon applied the potential of treemaps in several innovative and practical ways, and are now complementing their products with the addition of several traditional graphical displays (for example, bar and line graphs), including a few new variations on these themes. One of these variations is called a horizon graph.

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Who is on your list of Dashboard Experts?

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The design, implementation and maintenance of business dashboards spans a range of disciplines. Because dashboard design truely sits at the junction of business and technology, these disciplines are often not the areas of expertise found in the typical dashboard application team. A dashboard project is a learning process for team members encountering new subjects.

Wading into new territory can be uncomfortable, so let’s help each other out. Programmers can tell Graphic Designers where to start. Business Users can ask Information Visualization Specialists how to best describe their KPIs. Knowing what we don’t know is the best first step, so let’s not be afraid to ask for help and look to experts.

By popular demand, I’m releasing my big list of Dashboard Experts. This is my collection of feeds, blogs and resources that I keep a close watch on. The experts on the list span the range of information technology, business management, information design, application development and specialized dashboard software expertise.

Dashboard Spy List of Experts Click to visit the List of Dashboard Experts

I hope you find it useful. I’d love to grow the list with your help. Who do you read that you feel should be on this list?

Tags: Dashboard Experts, Dashboard Resources, Business Intelligence Resource

Flex Dashboard at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

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The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, aka the “Boston Fed”, is one of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks that make up the central banking system of the United States. Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, the Boston Fed serves the First Reserve District (a grouping of 6 New England states).

Enough of playing tour guide – what does the Boston Fed have to do with enterprise dashboards? Well, thanks to a tip from Dashboard Spy reader Doug Marttila, we have a great example of a Flex Dashboard by the Boston Fed. As Doug says: “It’s cool to see the Federal Bank making dashboards in Flex.”

By the way, Doug Marttila blogs about Data Visualization with Flex and Flash over at forestandthetrees.com and gave us that Election Center flex example.

The folks at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston have put together a fascinating Flex dashboard entitled:

Foreclosures, House Price Changes and Subprime Mortgages in Massachusetts Cities and Towns (Click to launch flex dashboard)

Flex Dashboard Example by the Federal Bank of Boston Click image to see large screenshot of dashboard.

It’s a great flex/flash dashboard example, not only because of the compelling subject matter, but because it’s a great way to visualize the progression of the data through the years. By using a slider control that changes the year, you can see the growth and decline of foreclosure rates in the various cities and towns of the state from 1990 through 2007.

Visit the dashboard to see how effective that slider control is. The dashboard can be a bit slow to load sometimes. I’ve provided a video of the bank dashboard here if you don’t want to wait. 

Tags: Flex/Flash Dashboard, Mortgage Foreclosure Dashboard, Real Estate Crisis Data Visualization

4 Principles for Dashboard Gauges

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In a recent Dashboards by Example post titled Dashboard Eye Candy, we poked fun at the usage of big honking dashboard gauges. Like them or not, however, they do indeed have their place on business intelligence applications.

One of the example gauges used in the article came from the folks at Perpetuum Software, maker of .NET Dashboard Suite, a set of dial/gauge/charting components. In response to the post, they submitted an article to The Dashboard Spy detailing 4 principles to observe when using gauges in digital dashboards and business applications.

The article explores the basic principles of using elements that emulate real analog devices to represent values on digital dashboards. It starts with the acknowledgement that there are both weaknesses and strengths in using such representations.

They even provide cartoons to illustrate the points!

Speed of Perception of Dashboard GaugesAesthetics of Digital Dashboards

There are four basic principles to consider when you are considering a gauge on your dashboard:

  • Is it a good metaphor?
  • Speed of perception
  • Visualization
  • Aesthetics

Here’s the article (click on the “read more” link):

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Flash Dashboard Example – Information Visualization about Oil Production

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Flash-powered dashboards continue to accelerate in their adoption. By the way, I use the term “Flash-based Dashboards” to include all swf-based dashboard technologies such as Adobe FLEX, Business Objects Crystal Xcelsius, etc – anything that requires Flash formats such as swf/flv. Flash technology has made big inroads in video media delivery and is building huge momemtum in the information visualization space. In fact, Information Builder’s introduction of their latest product, WebFOCUS Flex Enable, is being accompanied by a marketing push of the phrase “flashboards”:

The fusion of RIA with BI data and analytic capabilities creates a new generation of dashboards or “flashboards,” where animation and transition effects focus the user’s attention while custom interaction guides the user through the iterative analytic process. Flashboards make multi-dimensional applications simple and intuitive so that any user, not only experts in complex statistical and OLAP software, can easily gain insight into any dimension of the business.

Like it or not, “flashiness” is not only here to stay, but will be increasingly seen in the world of business dashboards – making for business intelligence applications that move, glow, rotate, spin, and otherwise distract. This makes the major challenge of the dashboard designer, once again, to balance the need for clarity against the want for eye candy.

Thanks to Dashboard Spy reader, Daryl Buss, we have a look at an information visualization by ft.com that shows Oil Production Statistics. Check out the visualization for yourself at that link.

I really enjoy your blog. I came across this oil production report by the Financial Times and thought your readers would enjoy this flash-based data visualization. Thanks again for your continued postings, and also for pointing us to your colleagues who also have valuable input. Keep up the good work!

For those that don’t have flash, don’t care to register at the financial times website, or just want a quick peek at the visualization, I’ve grabbed some footage of the Financial Times Oil Dashboard that you can view right here:

If you want to see a larger version, you can click on the following graphic and hit the green plus sign on the video on the next page.

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Making Dashboards More Productive – Google Analytics Dashboard Case Study

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In making the ROI case for any IT project or application development project, we like to talk about the productivity that the new system will bring. The usual case was to count up how many hours a task or workflow takes if done manually and compare it to the drastically reduced number of hours it will take when the system goes online. Well, most critical business processes have already been automated and how the discussion of productivity is measured in a finer fashion. We now count clicks and measure usability.

Let’s take a look at the issue of productivity when it comes to business dashboard use.

We begin with a look at productivity as defined in 1776 by Adam Smith in the famous book, The Wealth of Nations.

Smith defined productivity by dividing labor into two broad categories – productive labor and unproductive labor. According to Smith, productive labor was work which fixed value into tangible objects. Unproductive labor, on the other hand, was any work where the value was consumed as soon as it was created. The example given by Smith was the role of laborers in a manufacturing plant (who transferred their value through work into their output) versus the tasks of a servant (unproductive work).

Now let’s apply this to software applications in general and business dashboards in particular.

For a case study, let’s use the Google Analytics service, the wildly popular free service offerred by Google to allow tracking of website visitor analytics.

With its vast user base of web masters, the Google Analytics Dashboard is probably the most often-used business dashboard. Certainly, outside of the enterprise, it is often the first real BI dashboard encountered by the general public.

Here’s a screenshot of the first page of the Google Analytics Dashboard:

Avinash Kaushik's Google Analytics Dashboard

Yes, that’s Avinash Kaushik’s Google Analytics Dashboard. Avinash is Google’s web analytics evangelist and a real fan of dashboards. We previously posted a video of Avinash on Dashboards.

Anyway, the dashboard allows drill-down to many different views. Here are a couple of little thumbnails.

Google Analytics Dashboard Funnel Charts Google Analytics Map Chart Google Charts Analytics Dashboad Google Analytics Metrics Dashboard Google Analytics KPI Graph

Getting back to the idea of productivity of dashboards, the Google Analytics Dashboard has evolved quite a bit since the introduction of the service back in 2005. If you dig out some older dashboards, you can see how advances in dashboard design has incrementally increased productivity for users of the dashboard.

But what about larger jumps in productivity?

Well, take a look at this third-party offering by Serence called the Klipfolio for Google Analytics.

Here’s a screen shot of their desktop dashboard:

klipfolio desktop dashboard for google analytics

Uh, well… so what?… you may ask. There’s nothing earth-shaking about this little dashboard. It’s simply a summary dashboard with the typical red/green/yellow status lights.

Actually, the big deal is where this little dashboard goes. It’s a desktop dashboard.

If you are reading this post on the main page of the Dashboards by Example site, click on the “read more” link below to continue reading.

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