How you go about gathering the requirements from Business to build Dashboards?
How you engage your users during the development stage of Dashboard project?
These are very important questions, because we know that a good Dashboard is not defined by how many different data interfaces it is able to read data from e.g. XML, WSDL etc. but is defined by how a dashboard is able to engage a user and help a user to see the bigger picture.
A great dashboard is one which empowers a user to make an intelligent and actionable decision. "Empowerment" I believe is the key here and a user should feel empowered as a direct result of using a dashboard and also while being involved during the development phase of a dashboard.
In a quest to outline good dashboard design checklist, I came across a very good article by Zach Geminani on what he refers to as "Information Experience". In the article he discusses four objectives which can be applied in general to any dashboard initiative or a project.
Below is the outline of the checklist to meet the objectives of “Information Experience”.
The outline above is a great starting point and it helped me to try a brainstorming and requirement gathering process a year back.
The basic objective was to engage the business user to go through the process as if they are developing the dashboards themselves. This helps, as business user, to adhere to guidelines and to think through the relevance of specific information. The process also ensures that once a dashboard is created and deployed, its adoption is immediate.
I am sure, the process might not be a perfect one, so it is important for me to share it and see if it can be done in a better way.
Below is the presentation, which discusses the process involved.
You can download the Dashboard Components and Template from locations below.
Dashboard Components: http://www.box.net/shared/fzbmmbjbg6
Dashboard Template: http://www.box.net/shared/ps2h3i1j7y
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