dashboard design

The End of the One-Page Analytics Dashboard

Any viewer with a passing interest will (or should) want to know more, drill deeper, and ask “why?”.

The one-page dashboard was once the predominant form of visualizing data. It was the standard and the expectation. With touch screens, mobile devices, on-demand data, and interfaces crafted for interaction and user experience, the one-page dashboard is a relic. Use cases for one-page dashboards exist, but they are increasingly rare.

One-page dashboards came from the best of intentions: The objective was to provide an audience with a single view that showed all the key information together. In this way, the viewer could monitor important data and see where performance was good or bad, all at a glance with the necessary context.

A lot has changed since this type of dashboard was considered the peak of dashboard design (no offense to Jason Lockwood who did a great job within the confines of this exercise):

http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog

http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog

The admirable use of color and layout cannot overcome the misguided one-page constraint and disconnect from the needs of the viewer. You have to ask whether this form serves basic needs:

  • Can I see all the important information at a glance? While there is a lot of information, not all the useful detail finds a place (axis scales, for one thing). Worse, the volume of information is difficult to absorb with the exception of the person who is very experienced with the data.

  • Can you quickly spot the issue areas? The red dots are a start. But they skim the surface of the concerns that could be highlighted. And what if my definition of “concerns” changed based on the viewer's perspective? Furthermore, the viewer gets no guidance as to why certain items are highlighted and what they might do about it.

There is a broken assumption for one-page “monitoring” dashboards: seeing a problem (with whatever data can be fit on the page) is enough for the viewer. It seldom is. Any viewer with a passing interest will (or should) want to know more, drill deeper, and ask “why?”. A dashboard must not pass on this inherent responsibility to help the viewer. Identifying problems isn’t enough. A good dashboard attempts to help solve those problems.

Jerome Cukier describes the goal of purpose of dashboards:

“It’s about putting the needs of your users first...What is something that your users would try to accomplish that could be supported by data and insights?” 

The one-page dashboard is “a man without a country.” It tries to do too much for an executive who would much rather get an alert for the two problem areas...or at least more guidance about the meaning and relevance of what they are seeing. For someone who wants to engage more deeply with the data, the one-pager offers far too little. If done well, it only starts the conversation.

Changes in technology also undermine the premise of single-page dashboards. Trends in how we interact with information mean there isn’t a need to cram all the information together:

  1. The scrolling myth. A decade ago, asking users to scroll was nearly a sin. That’s no longer the case. Touch screens, mouse-scroll wheels, and gestures have made it easy and natural to move vertically on a screen. These interaction models have elongated what user experience designers consider a single screen. Our online experiences are entirely navigated through vertical scrolling. Scrolling acts as a form of guided gradual reveal.

  2. The power of dynamic interfaces. It was once a fair assumption that a dashboard would be a static snapshot of data, lacking the ability for users to interact with the content. Excel was the tool of choice and it took advanced Excel skills to make it interactive. Today dashboard building tools offer features for connecting key metrics to details that help explain reasons behind changes or outliers.

  3. The limits of attention. The information age has become the (limited) attention age. Mobile apps, smartwatches, and voice-activated interfaces recognize the need to deliver only the most critical information at the right time and let the user ask for more. The person provides context and desires; the computer provides notifications and answers. This new model of information exchange is at odds with the one-page dashboard. It is unreasonable to expect someone to stare deeply into the densely packed digits and sparklines of a one-page dashboard. There are better ways.

Scrolling-style dashboard

Scrolling-style dashboard

Nevertheless, the goal of the one-page dashboard remains: How to show viewers the big picture and understand it in context? How to encourage people to connect the dots across different data points? Modern interfaces have brought us better means to these ends.

Often there isn’t a meaningful distinction between dashboards to monitor and dashboards to understand. Monitoring highlights problems — and should flow seamlessly into the analysis of the root cause.

The best dashboards do even more: they guide viewers to details that are actionable, tell viewers what actions can be taken, and enable discussions between colleagues. All this doesn’t happen on a single page.

Data Empowers Conversations and Rainbows.

Rainbow in Cooperstown - June 3, 2012

Rainbow in Cooperstown - June 3, 2012

A cool afternoon rain was the only thing damper than the spirits of the 12-year-olds who shuffled off the field. With the score still lit up on the wooden scoreboard, the coaches yelled to the boys as they struggled to lift their heads so they might catch a glimpse of a rainbow as it rose from the fence in front of them.

The players of both the winning and losing teams stood there on the wet, steamy grass, frozen in place, in awe of the sight of a rainbow that mystically appeared as if painted on the sky just for them to see. For them, it was an atta boy, pat on the back, a perfect way to wrap up a hard fought double header in which the score had not quite represented the effort that the losing team had given, where the stats failed to tell the tale that brought these two teams together on the hallowed Cooperstown soil.

That’s the thing about numbers. When left to their own devices, they can feel as cold as digits on a lonely scoreboard. They say nothing of the teams who trained for months, played together game after game, relinquished their Saturdays and played nearly perfect seasons just to get to the tournament.

Numbers alone tell us nothing of context. When we have something particularly meaningful to say, images help us share it best. Dashboards and data visualizations bring to life presentations in which we can engage in two-way conversations with our audience making the story around our data more memorable, impactful and effective than any spreadsheet or table of numbers we can put in front of them.

What will your audience remember? The numbers, the final score? Share visually, and they will remember the rainbow and the sunshine that most certainly will follow.

Special thanks to Peter Bielan, my significant other, for inspiring this blog by sharing this photo that he shot during his son's baseball team pilgrimage to Cooperstown, NY this week.