visual analysis

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”

Late last month on the Juice Analytics weblog, they were talking about Stephen Few’s new concept, the “faceted analytics display.“

I like the idea, and I’m sure FADs are important. I just hate to see Few resort to a new term because inept designers have spoiled “dashboard.”

Dashboard is a valuable metaphor and should be defended. I’m afraid FAD will be forgotten.

Isn’t a FAD just a dashboard with extra features? When they added tachometers to auto dashboards, did dashboards become something else? If you add new software or a new peripheral to your computer, isn’t it still a computer?… Read the rest “Blinded by the “check engine” light”