Talk:Lesson10

Creating Good Dashboards

Hi everyone! I think Prof has already covered the main bulk of the importance of designing a good dashboard. Creating a purposeful dashboard is really crucial as it is the first thing that the audience see. Dashboards help to provide a bird’s eye view of the KPIs that the business has set. An interactive dashboard allows the report to be constantly updated and you can zoom in into details for greater analysis. However, I often make the mistake of cluttering up my dashboards with vanity metrics. In the end, my dashboard would look nice but they don’t lead to action. A good dashboard helps organizations get on the same page, speed decision-making and improve ROI. They help create organizational alignment because everyone is looking at the same thing. So dashboards are effective. They work. The questions are: how can they work for you?

Here are some really good dashboard designs!
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/dashboard-design-examples-resources/

-- Dina Heng Li Gwek

Reflections on Information Dashboard Design

Here are my reflections for Week 10:

Dashboard is very important to understand how to make it. It is very important to take many things into account, such as audience, the industry, colour themes, etc. The purpose of a dashboard to give the users an overview of everything, finding any problems with the data, coming out with insights from the data, etc. without much effort.

One thing that struck me is when prof said that even if you create your dashboard, it may not be an effective one. You need to take a lot of things into account, so I believe that a lot of planning and experience to create an effective dashboard. So, you should never give up and continue trying to create dashboards.

One thing that I would like to reflect is the Design Process. I would be using this process in my final project, and would even conduct studies to see whether the dashboard that my group that created would reach some of ours goals on whether the data is meaningful, beautifully constructed, etc.

-- Ong Ming Hao

Importance of Dashboards

Since I am studying Business I was very pleased that the class was talking about dashboards because it is something that we are discussing as really important in companies. It adds definetely value to the company because it helps to take good decisions and make a better profit. Of course it does not mean that without dashboard an enterprise won't be able to take good decisions but here it will be faster and clearer. It will allow the executives to have access to the crucial informations easily and fastly. Managers of department have already a lot to do and it can take time for us to follow the informations to the executives sometimes. I see dashboards like a necessity in big companies, specially when communication is impeded by size and complexity. If you are not convinced of this importance of the dashboards with what we already have discussed here or in class, I invite you to read this article: https://www.matillion.com/insights/how-important-is-a-bi-dashboard/

-- Margot Stelleman

Free dashboard software reviews

In class, we have dabbled with great paid software such as Tableau (Desktop and Public) and Power BI. While there are plenty of great dashboard software out there in the market, I think it is great that most of them allow for a free trial for us to dabble with it a bit more so that we will have some experience and knowledge of the different softwares out there when we enter into the workforce knowing which dashboard softwares are better.

Having said that, we can always explore some free trial dashboard softwares as below. For these softwares, all that is required is a business email (we can use the smu one for a free trial before you use your company’s email!) Then perhaps one you get comfortable with using the software you can upgrade to the paid version. The comments below are my own, and I do not intend to endorse any software or anything, just sharing the reviews there are out there :D

Zoho Reports

Zoho Reports is a very simple and beautiful dashboards with great interactivity and filters. In my opinon good for a very quick dashboard builder and scan for that last minute presentation that you have to give off the cuff. Users have rated this an 8.3/10 on overall based on their ease of use, features and functionality.

Clicdata

Clicdata is a clean and professional look with bright colours and live dashboard interactivity. It enables connection to many systems and databases from MySQL, Google Analytics and even Facebook. They are strong in their customer support and users rate them a 7.8/10 on overall. It is worth exploring too!

Source: http://www.predictiveanalyticstoday.com/open-source-dashboard-software/

--Albert Bingei