Dashboard Critique - Part Two

Work has finally died down enough to continue with the Dashboard Critique series that was started in Part One. If you remember, we were looking at this post from Dan, showing a company's Flash-based dashboard product.

In Part One, I talked about the left side of the dashboard, from the teeny-tiny column charts, to the mastery of white space misuse that was the Traffic Light "chart".

In this next part, I'm going to discuss the upper right corner of the dashboard. They're a little more boring in the scheme of things, but that just sets us up for the pure excitement of Part Three (tentative title: What is the most misleading chart ever, the cone chart or the 3-D ring?).

So here we go!

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The first chart is this yawn-inducing spreadsheet on the top middle:

Now, this is an interesting case, because I'm not one to say that EVERYTHING must be in graphs and charts. This is definitely the best way to show this detail, which is probably on the dashboard because it's very important to this theoretical client. Let's assume this, for sake of argument!

Let's also cover the other good things. I like the immediate red visualization for high risk. I like that some of the entries seem to be links (again assuming they are links, and not just text with underlined font). It appears I can filter. The rows are colored gray/white, making them easy to follow.Now, the bad. In the spirit of this non-visualization, I'll do it in list form:

1. The biggest issue - that tiny horizontal scroll bar. I think if I scrolled to all the way to the right, that 5% extra space would show the rest of the Response column. They should have tried to fit it all in one horizontal view, which seems possible with the current choices. Having both horizontal and vertical scroll bars is a pretty big no-no.
2. Part of #1's issue is that maybe this is just too small a space for so much information. Twice the width would pretty much solve your issue, and make this readable. And allow some of the other issues I'll go into in the next points to be solved.
3. I need a chart like this to see a lot of different things at once. This also applies vertically. That text wrapping is making every row super-wide, so I can only see 2 of 46 in this view. Take out text wrapping that interferes. You can substitute the text wrapping by letting me mouse over and see the full text, for example. And/or allow me to click to pull the entire chart into a pop-up window. You have to think smarter than default.
4. We all work with spreadsheets and charts all the time nowadays. I need to be able to sort and filter by column headers.
5. Speaking of, either give me good, sensical column sizes, or allow me to change the sizes myself. (Though please save my settings if that's the case...) Why is the Milestone column width the same as the Issue column width?
6. Though charts don't need borders around every cell, this needs something more than what they have. Very narrow and light vertical column separation, for example. Or better control of the internal margins of the cells (you can change the default settings, you know...). Or use more horizontal centering of cell content that isn't a long sentence. Something. That Action column's text is practically covering up the Response column!
   

Overall, this is seeing a chart made with old Excel defaults. You know the pre-2007 versions, with crappy visualizations and colors, and terrible font choice by default (hello 1996!). 2007 versions may have brought those weird ribbons, but they really cleaned up their game. Anything made in 2003 Excel Default Style just looks archaic, doesn't it? Just look at that crap. Even that red is TOO red, ya know?

If you look worse than what comes in default Microsoft Office settings, you have a problem.

BE SMARTER THAN DEFAULT

I'm going to get that embroidered on a pillow.

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OK, this next one's gonna be easy. This is arguably the biggest visual punch of the dashboard, so it must be great, right? On the upper right corner:

It took me a while to figure out what this graph was trying to show us. I get it now - the "general budget trend" is at -$37,000 (uh oh!), and if negative it's in the red, and positive in the green. Simple. One number, is it positive or negative.

So why is it so big???

And, if it's so big, why is the Main Point Of All This, the where you are now (-$37,000), so small?

There's not much to say that isn't terribly obvious here. I'm guessing the makers of this demo dashboard figured they needed a non-gauge gauge here. But this is basically a horizontal gauge. Not that there's anything wrong with that! It's just so poorly executed in this case....

Now in Part 3, we will be talking about the gauge on this dashboard, so they'll be plenty of time for that. My main problem with gauges is that they show so little for so much space. Though this graph sure proves that it can be worse!

Now, there's something to be said for a non-circular display (an issue with gauges), especially for postive/negative financials. And the real estate this should take up is relatively small, compared to a gauge. So if they had slimmed down the height of this bar, and put about 3 or 4 in this module (say, last month's average, last year's average, etc. - whatever's important.)

Part Three's discussion of gauge's sure will be fun!

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Moving on to, unfortunately, another yawner. This non-chart:


I've gotta say, this was another one that made me scratch my head as I tried to figure it out. And let me say, I still have absolutely no idea. Seriously. If you know what this is showing, let me know in the comments!

I'll tell you what it looks like went wrong here. The legend was so big, and the labels were so long (and shifted 180 degrees didn't give much room there), and the title, "Value of 0 = project on target", so long, that the actual visualization got smooshed and smooshed down into a tiny little space. I believe that might be a line chart, or perhaps an area chart? That's my best guess.

But wow, did this one screw up. (Remember, we got this out of marketing material for a data visualization company, believe it or not.)

Fix it. Change the legend to be in a box on the side, or remove it all together (have a button that will bring it up, add labels to the chart, add mouse-over tool tip info about what you're looking at - these are all non-default options that would be better. Just fix it, move things around, until you can actually see the data! Take the labels out of 180 degrees, and flip them to normal.

Oh, and those colors all look alike in the legend. You can't do that. Even if we could see the graph itself, this sure wouldn't be useful in any way.

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I think what has surprised me in this world of dashboards, having been working with data visualization as much as I have as an analyst, is how much people take the default that's given to them. If you wouldn't put it in a presentation, then it shouldn't go in a dashboard. You should be able to fix size, colors, text, font, etc. in a dashboard as much as you can in standard-issue Excel.

Remember:

BE SMARTER THAN DEFAULT

I'll send pictures of my embroidered pillow when it's done.

Part Three, coming soon!

Dashboard Critique - Part One

Dan recently put up this post, from a company's Flash-based dashboard product. Take a minute if you haven't already at the visuals:
http://playfairgroup.blogspot.com/2010/04/i-recently-got-e-mail-for-flash-based.html

I started to dissect the issues in the comments, but realized this probably needed its own entry. And once I started going, I realized this might need several entries!

I hate to tear apart others' visualizations, but it is hard to look beyond the poor choices made in this dashboard - both in chart type and formatting. And it's not necessarily this company who is alone in making these types of mistakes. It seems to be a common issue in these one-size-fits-all template dashboards, where you may be able to throw a chart here or there, though the thought seems to be missing for what you should see, and how you should see it. And of course, the formatting. Egads, the formatting. But more on that as we go on.

So here we go....

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Let's start up on the upper left and lower left charts, the two column charts of this dashboard:

Not knowing much about this data, it seems that the choice of a column chart here was spot-on. When you are looking to compare different aspects of like groups (here Budget/Actual/Anticipated, and Actual/Anticipated, of these business segments). What ruins these? Mostly, the size of the chart itself. I don't think there should ever be a reason to have more than 50% of the space in your chart display be for data labeling - and this must be at least 80%. With South Dashboards, is Anticipated higher than Budget? Is the actual percent complete of North Dashboards higher or lower than anticipated? I think once they see the y-axis labels running into each other like this, it's time to stretch things out.

Fixes? Either shrink the size of the text (make 2 lines, or abbrev. depts.), or increase the size of the graph's space. You know, Excel chart manipulation 101.

(There also may be too much rounding of the column edges to make accurate readings, but I can't tell for sure within the half inch of space provided...)

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Let's finish off the left side with arguably the most obvious waste-of-space on this dashboard, the traffic light:


The purpose of this chart is understood - it is trying to communicate a simple point: this project is behind schedule. But even a gauge chart (which I will get to later) give more meaning, since you can at least judge how far you are behind a target. The sad, lonely "-13%" floating at the bottom of the graphic makes me yearn for so much more. Oh what a useful chart you could have been!

Now, I am a fan of traffic lights in data visualization. Their colors are universally meaningful - RED=BAD/STOP, YELLOW=OK/CAREFUL, GREEN=GOOD/GO! In fact, the colors are so meaningful on their own, that you really don't have to build a physical traffic light diagram on which to display them.

Not to mention, of course, it takes up such valuable real estate on this dashboard with an essentially meaningless image. (The waste of space is particularly sad given the content both above and below so desparately needing more room.)

So ignoring the possibility of charting the percentages, and simply using the traffic light approach, here is an example of how to make this a more efficient use of space, and how to show, generally, how to use the traffic light concept to track projects. (Which the title of this module, "General Project Trend", has me believe is the point.)

Yes, a bad mock-up using MS Paint, but you get the idea. Some projects are in danger, some are close, and others are on the right track. Quick. Easy.

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So that about covers the left side of the dashboard. Coming up new posts, I will dissect the other areas of the dashboard, and look at the build as a whole.