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Flash Dashboard Example - Information Visualization about Oil Production

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.

Tags: Flashboards, Flashboard, flash-based dashboards, oil production dashboard, information builders dashboard, flash data visualization

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3 Responses to “Flash Dashboard Example - Information Visualization about Oil Production”

mr tom Said on June 11th, 2008 at 2:55 am quote
Interesting one.

The only section that encourages comparison is the table on the left!

The numbers are left to themselves rather than any qualitative statements made about them.

The other 80% (approx) of the screen is left to a picture of an oil derrick and a geography lesson which most of us don’t need, and rather than providing meaningful information about oil supply, it just screams “I can do flash, me” whilst unfortunately not using it to add any value at all.

Or am I wrong? Was this perhaps written for an audience that doesn’t know where the USA is?

I do have a confession to make, though - one which will get me into trouble with the dashboard hardliners - I saw a lovely implementation of flash in a chart in QlikView - essentially it permitted two axes (neither of which was time) with data items plotted across it. The third variable was time, and pressing the play button showed how it all changed with time.

Hardline criticisms - it took time to review the chart, you couldn’t concentrate on all data points at once to see how they moved, meaning you either had to watch it lots of times or just miss the trends and finally it would be no use printed out.

However, none of those things stopped me loving it.
krrh Said on June 11th, 2008 at 4:26 am quote
I agree with the previous post, the oil dashboard almost provided negative information there was so much distraction from a very small amount of valuable information.

mr tom, were you thinking about something like gapminder? http://www.gapminder.org/ . It is significant in that it’s one of the few examples where the use of a computer screen and user interface help to display *more* information rather than obscuring.
mr tom Said on June 11th, 2008 at 6:22 am quote
Yep. That sort of thing. The one I saw was in QlikView, but I think that everybody who supports swf is now developing something like that.

Had a quick look at gapminder. I like it. It’s essentially dashboard porn - adds little to the understanding, but lots of shinyness.

Last Modified: Sunday, July 27th, 2008 @ 21:08

This business intelligence dashboard blog entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 1:52 pm 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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"Dashboards By Example - BI Dashboard Samples" is the theme and mission statement of this blog. We salute the Dashboard Spy in the field - those business users, project managers, IT executives, application designers, business intelligence experts, analysts, coders and subject matter experts who are on site creating this exciting and new "face of BI". Your business intelligence dashboard can go by many names - performance dashboard, executive dashboard, business dashboard, balanced scorecard, KPI metric summary, enterprise dashboard, bi dashboard, corporate dashboard. Whatever we call it, we believe that the at-a-glance visual approach is the key to user-centric design. Let's learn from each other's dashboard examples and continue to increase the level of usability and usefulness.

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