Here’s a look at how the ProClarity product (an enterprise business intelligence suite acquired by Microsoft) uses the “heat map” style of visualization to show relative importance to certain KPIs. The enterprise dashboard screenshot below shows what they call “performance maps”. You can quickly see the relevance of large quantities of data through relative sizing and colors (the basic idea of heat map visualization technology). Based on parameters you define, the performance map allows you to easily compare two measures at one time. Bigger shapes mean bigger impacts and different colors indicating levels of performance. The graphic layout isn’t so great, but it’s a start. I’ll feature other examples of enterprise dashboards that use heat map technology in upcoming posts on The Dashboard Spy.

Tags: Heat Map Dashboards, Financial Enterprise Dashboard, Executive Dashboard, Heat Maps
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If you want to see a really excellent use of heatmap visualizations, see this post at O’Reilly (computer book publishers):
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/11/state_of_the_co_1.html