The BIG Blog

Animated Advanced Visualization

As advanced visualization is gaining traction within academic circles we are starting to see some amazing renditions of massive volumes of data telling stories previously not possible to the same depth. This 4 minute animation is a perfect example:

Hans Rosling reveals the story of the world’s past, present and future development.

Evaluating Data Visualization

Organizations are constantly struggling to quantify the not insignificant investment in business intelligence. In spite of this, according to a study by TDWI Research, adoption of data visualization technologies is growing by leaps and bounds. But what about levels of engagement with BI tools – are users ready to let go of there old reporting habits? The report suggests that we have a long way to go: Read the rest…

The Evolution of Dashboards

Dashboards are a visual representation of a complex set of data representing the state of performance of an organization, so that it may be viewed at a glance.

The last decade has seen a slow but perceptible evolution in dashboards.

What started out as simply a graphical form of report, is now being used very effectively as a performance management tool. The very exercise to filter down KPI to a succinct set helps the organization focus on what is really important. However, this is where many of the weaknesses in dashboard arise. With ever increasing regulatory reporting requirements, I am seeing more and more organizations focus too much on reporting KPI required by external bodies – rather than those KPI that better reflect a usable trend in performance. Read the rest…

Dashboard Layout Flexibility

One of the frustrating things about many dashboard development software programs is their rigid grid structure that constraints good dashboard design. One might be able to size portals to suit, but are burdened with set margins and spacings. Set grid patterns are a nightmare when you want to size and position KPI to demonstrate relative importance and interrelationships.

Line spacings are also a drag, along with limitations on font formatting – the whole line has to be the same font type, size, weight. This doesn’t work well if you have a dashboard chart title, with a subtitle that adds some required extra information. Read the rest…

Choosing the Right Format to Display Your KPI

In determining the best format for displaying a KPI on a dashboard you need to understand your data – its format and the profile of performance.

There are three types of data display:

1. Raw – is purely a snapshot of what has happened in the past reporting period. This is suited to performance that is chunky [occurs without predictable frequency] and has high variability in data value. This KPI type is typically presented using bar graphs.
2. Change – Often we are not interested in the actual value; we only want to know the percentage change. This might be an indication of growth rate. Using an above:below graph, with the horizontal axis set at 0; positive values above the line, and negative change values below.
3. Trend – the most telling type of KPI graph is the line graph. This shows the trend of performance and is a greater indicator of whether action is needed than either raw or change representations.

Designing Dashboards for Situation Awareness

The level of awareness an individual has for a situation – of knowing what is going on at any one time and how it fits into or impacts the overall system. Effective dashboards increase situational awareness but the danger of fixation on the measure, rather than the meaning and impact can overwhelm the advantage to sometimes disasterous results.

A well documented case by Endsley, Bolte and Jones [2003] tells of how a myopic focus on monitoring resulted in an airplane being flown into a mountain side whilst pilots argued about the cause of a flashing light. In fact 88% of human error in aircraft crashes are the result of poor situational awareness. The other 12% is through poor decision making or poor execution. Whilst the pilots were seen to do their job correctly, they were unable to readily access the information behind the dashboard indication.

Yet little attention is given to ensuring that situational awareness is a factor in dashboard design and integration of such BI tools into processes. The primary reasons given for this are:

• Executive dashboards are too generic and role specific to benefit from SA based development
• Operational dashboards are too costly to develop incorporating iterative SA practices

However, 50 SA dashboard design guidelines have been developed by Endsley, divided into 6 categories:

1. Organize information around goals – for instance, with pilots, the amount of gas is not important in itself, but in terms of ability to reach the destination with required fuel reserves and below landing fuel weight, based on the current environmental conditions is what is important to the pilot.
2. Directly support comprehension – indicate relative importance of different measures, their target values and deviation parameters
3. Support global SA – specific goals should be viewed in context of the overall picture
4. Context driven alerts – only include threshold alerts where important for the current task
5. Make context changes apparent – alerts received must be done in a context that provides awareness of a new situation
6. Use projections – trend information helps users create a mental model of future behavior

Two other factors that impact SA when using dashboards are the users confidence in the data viewed and the complexity of the design of the dashboard. For more on BI Dashboards