Thoughts on the “Ideal” Dashboard

Does an ideal dashboard exist?: This question over at LinkedIn asks about the current state of digital dashboards.

In your opinion, are existing tools satisfying or do they need to be adapted?

There’s some good commentary in the answers:

Less is more: (1) show limited information per page (2) offer limited possibilities to modify the data to ensure the consumer doesn’t ‘get lost’ in the information. There is a difference between analytical software and a dashboard! If you want to provide more possibilities, make a new “page” instead of endless drill-down features.

[…] As a ’seasoned’ user of dashboards I was often frustrated by designers that listened to user requirements and then went on to include (what they considered to be) ‘value add’ components. This often resulted in overly confusing and ‘cramped’ interfaces leaving the dashboard to either simply ‘fade away’ from lack of use or to be only utilised by an elite group of ’super users’.

[…] there is a crying need for “user-configured” dashboards - where the user decides what she needs and goes about creating own dashboard.