Dashboard

How prominent should alerts be on our business intelligence dashboards? One might be tempted to say right away that alerts and alarms should always be as big as possible. Well, keep in mind that digital dashboards are challenged to reflect the shades of grey that exist in the business and political environments in which they are built. We have to balance between the “Did you know?” advisories, the “Better check this out.” alarm, and the “OMG, shut down the reactor!” error alert.

Digital dashboards are small canvases that reflect the daily mayhem of our businesses. The more we jam onto that canvas, the harder it is to notice any one thing in particular. Will we notice little alert icons on our busy dashboards?

Does this mean we should put less on our dashboards? Recently, I’ve been installing apps on my iPhone and have noticed the very different approaches to using the screen space.

Here is a screenshot of a one-button application. The screen is literally filled with one big action button:

Imagine a big honking red alert icon that comes up on your dashboard when you need to stop what your’re doing and tend to an emergency situation. Too “big” for my taste, but you get the point.

Of course, we have to get into the business of parsing the subtleties behind various alert levels. For a humorous look at dashboard alerts, check out this video. Click on the image to go over to Dashboards.TV to see the video.

Isn’t that a great video?

Here is a good post about dashboard alerts from the smart folks at Juice Analytics:

Dashboard Alerts Checklist

Here are some icons for your use in creating “big” dashboard alerts.

Tags: Dashboard Alert icons

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

One Response to “Big Dashboard Alerts”

1. Tom Said on December 10th, 2008 at 4:19 am quote

   I think that, yes, if the reactor is about to melt down then one big button saying “avert meltdown” has merit.

   Otherwise I think using the available space to present as balanced a picture as possible is the best course of action.

   Also - kudos for posting Partridge - I didn’t know he’d made it to your side of the Atlantic. If you get a chance, look out for “The Day Today” - it’s pure genius although I’m sure it won’t all translate.

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Last Modified: Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 @ 13:52

This business intelligence dashboard blog entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 12:46 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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