Dashboards.TV

Inspirational Thoughts from Will Smith

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:01:12 +0000

I spend so much heads-down time with my business intelligence dashboard work that I often forget that there’s a big world out there. Often I’m reminded of it in negative ways. Other times, I come upon something remarkable that makes me so proud of the human spirit.

Take a look at this inspirational video.

Warmly,

Hubert Lee

The Dashboard Spy

IT Dashboard Unveiled by Federal Government

admin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:04:57 +0000

The US Federal Government announced an innovative new way to provide transparency and reporting of their IT portfolio spending. In this boon to project management dashboards and digital tools for government transparency, the Fed has created a communication channel that is both innovative and a signal of a change in responsible reporting.

Tags: Vivek Kundra, National CIO, Federal Dashboard, IT portfolio dashboard

Review of the Federal Dashboard

admin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:56:23 +0000

In this review of the Federal IT Dashboard, the skeptics warn about how the data may not be actionable. While the data is there and well presented, there is doubt about whether the users will try to fudge their numbers. They do like the fact however that the project went from concept to action in 90 days.

Excel Dashboard

admin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:47:50 +0000

Using only Microsoft Excel, Jorge Camoes created this dynamic business dashboard to track demographic information. This excel example shows how one can create dashboards that are both visually pleasing and highly functional with an office tool that you already have.

Tags: Excel Dashboards

Federal Dashboard

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:23:57 +0000

Information Technology Portfolio Dashboard walkthrough provided by the usaspending.gov dashboarding team. An excellent example of a help video to explain how to use a business intelligence dashboard. The Federal IT dashboard provides management transparency for the public by tracking the I.T. spend at over 30 federal agencies.

Interaction Design for Web Interfaces

admin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:05:51 +0000

Six design patterns for designing rich web experiences: 1. Make it direct. 2. Keep it lightweight. 3. Stay on the page. 4. Provide invitations. 5. Use transitions. 6. React immediately. These are presented by Bill Scott author of the OReilly book: Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions.

In this book, UI experts Bill Scott and Theresa Neil present more than 75 design patterns for building web interfaces that provide rich interaction. Distilled from the authors’ years of experience at Sabre, Yahoo!, and Netflix, these best practices are grouped into six key principles to help you take advantage of the web technologies available today. With an entire section devoted to each design principle, Designing Web Interfaces helps you:

Make It Direct-Edit content in context with design patterns for In Page Editing, Drag & Drop, and Direct Selection
Keep It Lightweight-Reduce the effort required to interact with a site by using In Context Tools to leave a “light footprint”
Stay on the Page-Keep visitors on a page with overlays, inlays, dynamic content, and in-page flow patterns
Provide an Invitation-Help visitors discover site features with invitations that cue them to the next level of interaction
Use Transitions-Learn when, why, and how to use animations, cinematic effects, and other transitions
React Immediately-Provide a rich experience by using lively responses such as Live Search, Live
Suggest, Live Previews, and more

Designing Web Interfaces illustrates many patterns with examples from working websites. If you need to build or renovate a website to be truly interactive, this book gives you the principles for success.

Tags: Dashboard Design Tips, RIA design, Interaction Design, UI Design

Dashboard Design Tip 5 - Keep Dashboards to One Page

admin — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:36:21 +0000

In this final dashboard design tip from IIR Executive Development’s series on How to Design Effective Dashboard Reports, the tip given is the simple “One Page” rule. Simply put, make sure that your dashboard report is never more than a single page.

A dashboard contains a lot of information in a small amount of space. There is no sense in making the consumption of it harder than it has to be.

“At-a-glance” should be your mantra.

Tags: Dashboard Reports, Length of Dashboards, One-page dashboard

Dashboard Design Tip 4 - Layout Optimization

admin — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:15:28 +0000

“Pay attention to the layout of your business dashboard” is the message of this fourth video in the series of Tips for Dashboard Report Design from IIR Executive Development.

The rule of thumb is that the more important the information, the closer to the top left corner of dashboard you should put it. Conversely, the less important the material, the closer to the bottom right side of the screen you would place it.

This is because, as explained in the video, “the user’s eye is naturally drawn to the top left of the sheet”.

Tags: Dashboard Design, Dashboard Layout, Dashboard Report

Dashboard Report Design Tip 3 - Color Selection

admin — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 04:27:57 +0000

Business Dashboard Report Design Tip 3: It is very important to use appropriate colors to convey the right information. A few rules from this video from the IIR Executive Development course on information dashboard design.

Don’t distract the eye by using bold colors too often. Reserve bold colors on your dashboard design for where you want to emphasise information and draw the user’s eye. Generally, you want to use soft, pastel colors that are complementary to each other.

Be careful of black and white printers used to print dashboard reports. Make sure that the colors can be distinguished from each other on a grayscale.

Tags: Dashboard Report Color selection, Information visualization, bar chart design, Business graphics

Dashboard Design Tip #2 - Choose the Right Medium

admin — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:19:37 +0000

Dashboard Design Tip #2- Choose the correct medium for the message. In this second video in the series of Dashboard Design Tips, the course instructor stresses the importance of the medium. “Tip: Make sure you choose the best medium for communication information.”

One digital dashboard can contain multiple mediums such as text, graphs, etc.

If some information is best presented in a narrative form, make sure that narrative is concise and to the point.

Tags: BI dashboard reports, Business Intelligence Dashboard Design Tips, How to create meaningful dashboard reports, dashboard medium selection.