4 Principles for Dashboard Gauges

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 Gauges Aesthetics 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):

Principles of using gauges in executive dashboards and business applications.
by Eugene Akinshin, Ph. D., Chief Technical Evangelist for Perpetuum Software LLC

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
If you read title of this article and didn’t exit the page, you probably know that implementation of various dashboards in business applications is rather new and popular trend. As all new tendencies that don’t have firm rules, executive dashboards raised a lot of discussions on practical usefulness of both complete concept and separate dashboard elements. One of the points at issue is the use of graphical elements imitating real analog devices to represent values. In this article I tried to state basic principles of using such elements.

In general, initial meaning of the Executive Dashboard term faintly relates to real dashboards and means special type of reports providing the most important business performance indices in real time. It is expected that Executive Dashboards as well as all other reports provide data in tabular form and more rarely as charts and diagrams. Though, powerful graphical tools that are used by developers and users of business systems boost literal interpretation of the Dashboard term.

As I am a power engineering specialist by training, I faced quite a lot of point indicators (gauges) in practice. And contrary to the widespread opinion that such devices are extremely convenient in most cases it is not true. Anyone who has ever worked with point and numeric multimeters can confirm that numeric meters are more convenient since you don’t need to wait till the pointer stops, strain your eyes to match pointer reflection on the mirror strip with the pointer itself and to count divisions on the scale. And, of course, to get accurate registration you need to keep the device right before your eyes (or eyes before the device). Vibration and poor light don’t contribute to getting accurate registration.

At first, the idea of using control panels (dashboards) in business applications seemed incredible to me. What? Back to lithic age? Do you really want to fill the whole screen with these archaistic point devices? Leave no pixels to display hundreds of indices that are even more important for business analysts then those in the screen?

This impression was reinforced by Executive Dashboards I have already seen, as they were eye-catching and useless. Do you think that CEO report should look exactly like car dashboard? Of course, not. This is not prestigious; it should look like PLANE dashboard! So, most of such creative solutions impress at presentations, but they are completely useless in practice.

In spite of that, as a co-owner of the company that specializes in development of components designed to emulate real dashboards, I couldn’t but become interested in a new market for our products. More careful analysis discovered that along with the mentioned before “masterpiece” dashboards there is quite a good number of perfect samples of using gauges.

And although I still think that the use of gauges is reasonable only in some business applications, correct utilization of such components can dramatically improve application usability and even raise it to a new level.

Let’s sort out what ‘correct use’ means and what real advantages gauges provide.

1. GOOD METAPHOR

Almost all user interface development guides state the first main rule: “Choose good metaphor”. Sometimes metaphor comes from subject area. So, when you develop graphic editor it makes sense to use metaphor that includes paper, pen, rubber, i.e. the concepts the user faced with before in real life and has an idea of their behavior and functions. But very often subject area is more abstract and good metaphor is a real problem. Usability specialists state that right metaphor is a key factor that determines application success, as it can extremely reduce evaluation and training time.

What have gauges to do with it? Gauge is a natural metaphor for many things.

We use thermometer since childhood and get a clear idea that if stem of the thermometer is in the red zone, temperature is higher than it should be etc. Those who drive a car, every day watch registration of point devices.

I think these samples present a clear idea that visual elements should be designed in the way their appearance provides as much information on the type of displayed values as possible.

For example, displaying value on the point device means that all acceptable values are in the range determined on the scale. Slider gauges show that value can be changed by the user. Availability of scale segments helps define bounds of value ranges. Blinking elements warn against errors or going beyond acceptable values range.

Thus, novice user of the system will have no trouble to learn system interface. At the same time it would be better to provide more informative interface with less graphic to experienced users.

2. SPEED OF PERCEPTION

Speed of information perception is one of unquestionable merits of analog gauges. Reaction to pointer moving towards the red zone or blinking indicator can be much faster then reaction to changing numeric indicator.

That is why the supermodern fighters use out-of-date dashboards with a lot of pointers and indicators.

Stop! What have fighters to do with it? We talked about business, not about war. It is not matter of milliseconds; you can relax and have a cup of coffee before you make important decision, can’t you?

Well, let’s calculate.

Every manager regardless of his level regularly reviews the same reports in most cases daily and in most cases just to make sure everything is ok. As a rule it doesn’t take much time – only 10 minutes a day.

10 minutes a day is 10*5=50 minutes a week;
is 10*5*4= 200 minutes a month;
is 10*5*52=2600 minutes a year (ok, I know 4 week I a vacation, let it be 10*5*48=2400 minutes a year).
Suppose we will reduce time of reviewing reports to 1 minute due to higher speed of perception. In this way we will save 9*5*48=2160 minutes a year; this constitutes 4.5 working days. Multiple this figure by your hour wages (or hour wages of your employees) to evaluate economic effect.

And this is for people who spend only 10 minutes a day for reports. And what about analysts?

3. VISUALIZATION

Very often it is difficult to make right decision based on bare data. Human brain operates by visual images and not by mathematical abstractions. Properly designed gauge allows visual evaluation of the extent the displayed value differs from the planned one, and how close it is to the critical value, etc.

But you should remember that visual indicators don’t replace exact figures, but supplement them. That is why you should never forget to duplicate values as figures. You should always know exact value regardless of visual representation.

4. AESTHETICS

Applications should be attractive as well as any other things we use. As human beings we like using nice things no matter useful they are for business or not. Moreover, comfortable environment contributes to more efficient work of your personnel; people are less tired and stress-susceptible. You didn’t paint walls in your office with black color only because black paint is cheaper, did you? Then why should you strain your eyes observing neat rows of figures that merge into solid mass by the end of working day to find necessary data. Make application interface more attractive and many routine operations will become less tedious.

SUMMARY

Visualizations such as gauges can be a useful supplement to standard report representation. But to use gauges in applications efficiently, you need to accurately adjust visual elements to exact applications subject to used metaphor, visualization, speed of perception and design of the developed application.

Tags: Digital Dashboard Gauges, Principles of Dashboard Design, Perpetuum Software

What do you think about this dashboard post? Please leave a comment. Your opinions are valuable to the entire business dashboarding community.

4 Responses to “4 Principles for Dashboard Gauges”

mr tom Said on June 16th, 2008 at 4:05 am quote
Any chance of some examples of what they feel to be good practice vs poor practice? - either screenshots or scanned scribble.

Cheers.

Tom.
Jonah Said on June 16th, 2008 at 9:31 am quote
Their gallery is miserable. http://www.perpetuumsoft.com/Gallery.aspx?pid=44

Of their many gauge types, there is only one that I might ever consider using, the linear progress bar. The rest are terrible.
Al Sicora Said on June 16th, 2008 at 10:47 am quote
I think you’re being too harsh. I visited the gallery link you provided as well as looked around the rest of the site. There are controls I would never use, but there are also many that are fine for me. I’ve looked at other component packages and many of these are typical of what I found.

It may be a matter of taste.
mr tom Said on June 17th, 2008 at 3:04 am quote
This is a difficult one.

I don’t like the example dashboards, but they look “real world” and in the real world, one is constrained by customer demands.

I also wasn’t fond of the example controls and series, but they do demonstrate a broad flexibility and I am sure that if I used the software, I could come up with something more suitable.

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

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