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Ted Cuzzillo

Reading the signs

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While we’re talking about leading indicators, there’s the Iraqi “fixer’s” story on Fresh Air (August 9) about knowing when a car bomb will explode.

Ayub Nuri solved reporters’ everyday logistical problems and helped conduct interviews with local sources. He was the insider.

One afternoon his car was ordered into an area he knew was seething. He put on his helmet and flak jacket and tried to make the driver go elsewhere. But the driver followed orders, and within a few minutes Nuri noticed neighbors fleeing. After a few more minutes, the bomb went off, not far from where he’d just stood.… Read the rest “Reading the signs”

Managing by walking around with a dashboard on your head

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Imagine an executive walking around with a “dashboard” on his head. It looks like a pair of sporty sunglasses, but it does much more. Whereever he turns his head, pop-up windows tell him what he’s looking at. He doesn’t even have to ask “What’s going on in that cubicle?”

Detailed background on everyone from temps to hot-shot VPs shows up in his little glasses.

I’m just free-associating on the fantasy described in William Gibson’s 1994 novel Virtual Light. Jason Fry mentions that vision in today’s Wall Street Journal. His article is about New York cabbies complaining that the city’s new GPS system can track them—and the many other uses for tracking.… Read the rest “Managing by walking around with a dashboard on your head”

Facing up to the dashboard metaphor

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After about three quarters of an oatmeal stout, my old friend Sam the BI developer wondered aloud, “What is the ideal dashboard?”

There was no need to call Steve Few or Edward Tufte. I had the answer right away. (I had been sipping an oatmeal stout myself.)

The ideal dashboard, I said, is like the human face. You can read the big, obvious signs at a glance: whether the person is smiling, frowning, snarling, or foaming. You know right away whether things are OK.

If things are not OK, you know you’d better ask. That is, you drill down.

If you can’t be direct, you might go on a hunch.… Read the rest “Facing up to the dashboard metaphor”