>They also employ UX techniques that dates from a time where the only UI component you can use was a light bulb. If that red thing is critical, can’t you tell me right away what it means?
This annoyed me a little bit. A check engine light is the perfect component for what it does. If it's on it means that something may be seriously wrong and that you're probably too stupid or ill-equipped to fix it.
If it was something simple, easily detectable and fixable it would have its own light, ie the door is open, you're running out of gas.
It's also a great design because it needs to be highly reliable, and lights are probably the simplest things you can apply power to to generate a notification.
Also the note about the tachometer struck me as a little odd. The tachometer can tell you if your vehicle is running at a high idle, if the bumps you're feeling are misfires or the road, and it can also tell you whether you've accidentally left your vehicle in 3rd instead of drive after coasting to a stop. Finally, the tach can be used as a raw assessment of the load you're putting on an engine and you can optimize your driving habits according to that. It's not useless information and I much prefer it to an extra cluster of dummy lamps for all that stuff.
This is not true. The check engine light can come on in some cars if the gas cap is not screwed on tight enough - easily fixed yet treated as serious as a major engine malfunction.
The light is ridiculous. It should read the code in models that have a text display, instead of needing to go to Autozone and rent an OBD code reader. It's bullshit. Tell me the error up front so I can Google it.
> This annoyed me a little bit. A check engine light is the perfect component for what it does. If it's on it means that something may be seriously wrong and that you're probably too stupid or ill-equipped to fix it.
> If it was something simple, easily detectable and fixable it would have its own light, ie the door is open, you're running out of gas.
I've been in new vehicles with a single light for "low tire pressure". But it wouldn't tell you which tire. Sure, I can discover this by manually reading the pressure on all the tires, but the system has to already know this information. It's just incapable of displaying it.
That is not the purpose of the check engine light (official name "Malfunction Indicator Light"). At least in the US the light only comes on when there is a problem that affects emissions, and it is usually nothing that would cause a breakdown. It usually does not mean anything serious is wrong and the most common cause is a loose gas cap, which is easily fixed.
The engine warning light is actually the shittiest thing on the dashboard. It can mean anywhere from 10 to 500 things, and nobody knows.
Result? Manufacturer manuals ALL OF THEM will tell you: "Just keep on driving, if it doesn't go off after a few days/a few drives bring the car to a mechanic."
Seriously, go get your manual and check what it says.
I mean, what the fuck?
How the hell is that good in ANY way, shape or form?
Most articles are shitty, this is an example of one.
Most technical articles are written by someone blinkered by their specific experience which they feel is so wonderful that they should share with the world.
Save the internet from such dross and write it on a piece of paper, roll it up and shove it up the ares your talking out of.
Writing bad articles is a great way to move toward writing good articles.
Writing in the public view is a great way to get feedback on your writing and the subjects you discuss—e.g. corrections, further education, etc. For some people, it also increase the pressure to improve.
Vanity is only one possible reason for writing in the public view, and it's an exercise with large potential gains. Your perspective is entirely off, and you've decided to take an opportunity to attack someone who was either brave enough or indifferent enough to risk being attacked in the first place.
Such a useful, insightful comment. And how BRAVE you are to post it on an account you created just for the purpose. There does seem to be a fair amount of talking-out-the-"ares" (sic) around here, but it isn't coming from the article.
By the way, the correct word in this situation is "you're"
There seems to be an attitude throughout the article of "users are too stupid to understand dashboards", and maybe this is true to some extent, but that's really not a good reason to dumb-down interfaces (which seems to be what it's calling for.) E.g.
You have no idea what your users will decide based on the data you are showing them. But you somehow assume your users will know.
My eternal gratitude to anyone who can tell me what to do with session duration at the hourly level. “People at 4:53AM on Monday stayed longer on the site than at 11:36AM”? So what?
Just because you don't know what to do with the data doesn't mean the same applies to everyone else...
The point is that numbers in themselves means nothing to most people and are actually not actionable.
The purpose of a dashboard is to give instant feedback on something that requires it. (Driving a car, airplane, nuclear reactor, space station, server load) i.e. if something is wrong you should be able to see it right away so you can take action.
The dashboards we see today are more like vanity boards which feed our need for new information but doesn't really serve any other purpose.
I can second the recommendation for the Information Dashboard Design book. It provides some extremely clear guidance and recommendations. Thanks for the pointer to the first resource, I'll definitely check that out.
I can't figure out if he doesn't like the phrasing (instead of "last year," maybe) or thinks the time period is not useful.
Generally speaking, especially near the beginning of the year, I often find "last 12 months" to be far more useful than "this year," which he didn't call out.
Had meant to point at "Last 6 months". (Last 12 months is often useful)
IHMO, it clutters the options with options that are not useful (do you often look at your 14 days spending?) and already included in other options that are close.
New Relic comes to mind, and it's a tool I've found hugely useful.
While it doesn't instrument full system monitoring (though it's getting there), it provides numerous system and site metrics, monitoring, and a useful degree of logging, that's hugely useful.
One of the biggest gains for us came when it implemented JVM heap monitoring. This is possible through jconsole, but jconsole is a steaming heap which if it were actually made of sht would be useful as it might provide fertilizer. It's a Java app itself, has no persistence, must be running to tell you what you need to know, presents its own security vulnerabilities (if you can attach jconsole to your JVMs other JDK hacks can as well), and more. Given the critical nature of heap and GC operations to site performance, having the insight through NR, and not having to rely on desktop jconsole sessions (for each member of the admin team individually, oh yeah, forgot that one) was a huge boost.
And the NR team both understands the tech they're monitoring and works with clients. So many of the stats provided are* actionable.
Interesting, because we use New Relic extensively, and I was just thinking of it as the prime example of, "what the hell is the purpose of all these dashboards and what do they mean?"
Srsly, this article seems littered with so many assumptions it's hard to decipher the actual point.
Tachometer has no use? Tell that to professional drivers.
Real time stats are worthless? Not unless you expect a spike in your server load (?) and need to react to it immediately.
If you can't find a use for some number, others may. That's what controls are for. You take the set of data your app (or whatever) has to offer, then you toss in some controls (your job is to make them intuitive so user does actually use them without tears) that can operate on and present the data and then everyone gets to choose what they see.
Bottom line is that the only way you can figure out that something is right for each individual is to give them a choice. The whole no one needs X seems far-fetched (to say the least). Sure you need to talk to users, but they most likely will express different opinions.
Also, don't build more dashboards. What? So we shouldn't improve on our mistakes, right? The concept is so bad that we shouldn't even try because no one (again, assumptions) can build good dashboard. C'mon..
>"Most KPIs (traffic, revenue) are too volatile on a daily basis to be useful. Yet “last 30 days daily” is more or less the default option."
YES! If you're building a dashboard, don't answer the question "what data do I have?" or "what does the brass say this should be?" But instead, get out and talk to users, find out what data is most important to them, think outside the box, throw some different ideas out there and see what sticks with users.
> Or because the exec team somehow thinks “we need a dashboard”.
I think many have recognized the demand for dashboards and sprung a cottage industry around it. That is demands often are perverted and sometimes it just comes from an exec wanting to see some "action" or gaining "visibility". They have VC money to spend and will spend money for moving "realtime" colors on the screen.
For the dashboard creators, that is all they need. If someone buys is it. They will keep making it.
On other hand, to disagree with the author. "So what?" People want shitty realtime moving colors because they look cool. Heck, have you seen the crap people pay for in app stores, farmville type games on Facebook and so on. One can criticize the providers and consumer of that crap. Yet they are happily transferring money and product between each other.
> That is demands often are perverted and sometimes it just comes from an exec wanting to see some "action" or gaining "visibility".
Yup. I can't even begin to imagine the amount of time lost on executive or PM useless whims (and how much good could have been achieved with that time and resources).
From a product perspective, dashboards are pretty much expected and required. If you're building something in the 21st century, people expect a central thing that tells people what's going on. If your answer is 'hey dashboards are shitty', customers can use your competitors shitty dashboards and at least feel like they have more insight into whats going on in your product.
Or better yet since dashboards are so terrible, let's all go download 10 million line CSV files. While I've seen my fair share of terrible/useless dashboards, many do provide some sort of insight into the data that previously would have only been gained by aggregating log files or running complex sql queries.
Dashboards are a visualization and interactive tool and like any tool have better and worse uses.
While the OP hits lots of points squarely, I strongly disagree about the "no one needs real time". In particular, any service that does onboarding or signups would be really well served to track new users through the getting started process.
I live in the custom dashboard that I built for my startup.
It tracks every single signup from provisioning through to successful setup. It lets me easily see if people are flailing trying to get things working and if it looks like they are I send them a personal email like: "It looks like you might be having some issues with picking an email approver address, can I help?"
Having this real-time insight into customer issues lets me provide much better support and from an ROI basis is incredibly worthwhile.
> Yes, back-end applications need ways to show their users that they’re working
This is probably the only reason many dashboards exist. They're not there to be useful, but to provide proof that the gears are turning behind the system.
> My eternal gratitude to anyone who can tell me what to do with session duration at the hourly level. “People at 4:53AM on Monday stayed longer on the site than at 11:36AM”? So what?
This is so arrogant. If your customers are not interested in target demographics then ok. Generalising this to everyone is not ok.
That said, I have an amazing PM who has customized the living heck out of our TFS Dashboard such that it is useful.
Most fun of all is seeing our "daily bug resolved as fix rate" and "daily bug incoming rate". Seeing them as flat numbers in boxes is, IMHO, more useful than seeing them as on a graph.
But yeah, the dashboards I see other teams using? The worst is a bug tracking dash that is updated once every 4 hours. During crunch week, it serves to do not but spread chaos and confusion.
"Take care dashboards for example. They use vast amount of real estate to display information that is useless 99% of the time. How often do you need to know the RPM on an automatic car? Can’t you just take that stupid dial out and put something useful instead?."
Typo corrected. I'm not saying you should let the users go in the red without knowing. But does it have to be a big dial that takes a 1/3 of the dashboard?
Nobody mentioned astrology or dilution of responsibility?
Dashboards are an astrological tool. Here is an elaborate and complicated process you don't understand to generate numbers that are devoid of meaning, to dilute responsibility when you make a decision that turns out to be wrong.
The article misses this point entirely. A good dashboard from the end user perspective can be used as numerical backup for any arbitrary decision at any time. The author just doesn't get it. Thats why the author is confused by the "just keep adding stuff until I can always use it to justify whatever I want to do".
This is how dashboards are used in practice, this is their actual reason for existing. This is why money is spent on them.
The article is like a debunking of astrology, "well see here, based on the gravitational constant and the distance to this orange vs venus, the square results in ..." and the boss replys with "shut up I don't care about reasons I decided to go to war with eastasia and we've always been at war with eastasia and my astrologer always had my back, and apparently you don't, so lets discuss the effect of all this gravitational formula stuff on your career prospects vs backing me up which you're paid as a yes man to do..."
I've gotten a lot of mileage from Mint's dashboards when trying to identify where I'm wasting money. I appreciate their email, but the dashboard is actually tremendously useful.
[+] [-] aunty_helen|11 years ago|reply
This annoyed me a little bit. A check engine light is the perfect component for what it does. If it's on it means that something may be seriously wrong and that you're probably too stupid or ill-equipped to fix it.
If it was something simple, easily detectable and fixable it would have its own light, ie the door is open, you're running out of gas.
[+] [-] jschwartzi|11 years ago|reply
Also the note about the tachometer struck me as a little odd. The tachometer can tell you if your vehicle is running at a high idle, if the bumps you're feeling are misfires or the road, and it can also tell you whether you've accidentally left your vehicle in 3rd instead of drive after coasting to a stop. Finally, the tach can be used as a raw assessment of the load you're putting on an engine and you can optimize your driving habits according to that. It's not useless information and I much prefer it to an extra cluster of dummy lamps for all that stuff.
[+] [-] cvburgess|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icelancer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deathanatos|11 years ago|reply
> If it was something simple, easily detectable and fixable it would have its own light, ie the door is open, you're running out of gas.
I've been in new vehicles with a single light for "low tire pressure". But it wouldn't tell you which tire. Sure, I can discover this by manually reading the pressure on all the tires, but the system has to already know this information. It's just incapable of displaying it.
[+] [-] mattgrice|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zobzu|11 years ago|reply
Result? Manufacturer manuals ALL OF THEM will tell you: "Just keep on driving, if it doesn't go off after a few days/a few drives bring the car to a mechanic."
Seriously, go get your manual and check what it says.
I mean, what the fuck? How the hell is that good in ANY way, shape or form?
[+] [-] mehh|11 years ago|reply
Most technical articles are written by someone blinkered by their specific experience which they feel is so wonderful that they should share with the world.
Save the internet from such dross and write it on a piece of paper, roll it up and shove it up the ares your talking out of.
[+] [-] nsmartt|11 years ago|reply
Writing in the public view is a great way to get feedback on your writing and the subjects you discuss—e.g. corrections, further education, etc. For some people, it also increase the pressure to improve.
Vanity is only one possible reason for writing in the public view, and it's an exercise with large potential gains. Your perspective is entirely off, and you've decided to take an opportunity to attack someone who was either brave enough or indifferent enough to risk being attacked in the first place.
[+] [-] packetslave|11 years ago|reply
By the way, the correct word in this situation is "you're"
[+] [-] userbinator|11 years ago|reply
You have no idea what your users will decide based on the data you are showing them. But you somehow assume your users will know.
My eternal gratitude to anyone who can tell me what to do with session duration at the hourly level. “People at 4:53AM on Monday stayed longer on the site than at 11:36AM”? So what?
Just because you don't know what to do with the data doesn't mean the same applies to everyone else...
[+] [-] ThomPete|11 years ago|reply
The purpose of a dashboard is to give instant feedback on something that requires it. (Driving a car, airplane, nuclear reactor, space station, server load) i.e. if something is wrong you should be able to see it right away so you can take action.
The dashboards we see today are more like vanity boards which feed our need for new information but doesn't really serve any other purpose.
A really good read on the subject is this one
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/smart-analytics-dashboard-mod...
[+] [-] CCs|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hvass|11 years ago|reply
1) http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-dashboards-strategic-...
2) Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few - http://www.amazon.ca/Information-Dashboard-Design-Effective-...
[+] [-] travem|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chavesn|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sejje|11 years ago|reply
I can't figure out if he doesn't like the phrasing (instead of "last year," maybe) or thinks the time period is not useful.
Generally speaking, especially near the beginning of the year, I often find "last 12 months" to be far more useful than "this year," which he didn't call out.
[+] [-] unterstrom|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulcothenet|11 years ago|reply
IHMO, it clutters the options with options that are not useful (do you often look at your 14 days spending?) and already included in other options that are close.
[+] [-] swat535|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imaginenore|11 years ago|reply
3 months = a quarter
12 months = a year
[+] [-] dredmorbius|11 years ago|reply
New Relic comes to mind, and it's a tool I've found hugely useful.
While it doesn't instrument full system monitoring (though it's getting there), it provides numerous system and site metrics, monitoring, and a useful degree of logging, that's hugely useful.
One of the biggest gains for us came when it implemented JVM heap monitoring. This is possible through jconsole, but jconsole is a steaming heap which if it were actually made of sht would be useful as it might provide fertilizer. It's a Java app itself, has no persistence, must be running to tell you what you need to know, presents its own security vulnerabilities (if you can attach jconsole to your JVMs other JDK hacks can as well), and more. Given the critical nature of heap and GC operations to site performance, having the insight through NR, and not having to rely on desktop jconsole sessions (for each member of the admin team individually, oh yeah, forgot that one) was a huge boost.
And the NR team both understands the tech they're monitoring and works with clients. So many of the stats provided are* actionable.
[+] [-] vkjv|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gear54rus|11 years ago|reply
Tachometer has no use? Tell that to professional drivers.
Real time stats are worthless? Not unless you expect a spike in your server load (?) and need to react to it immediately.
If you can't find a use for some number, others may. That's what controls are for. You take the set of data your app (or whatever) has to offer, then you toss in some controls (your job is to make them intuitive so user does actually use them without tears) that can operate on and present the data and then everyone gets to choose what they see.
Bottom line is that the only way you can figure out that something is right for each individual is to give them a choice. The whole no one needs X seems far-fetched (to say the least). Sure you need to talk to users, but they most likely will express different opinions.
Also, don't build more dashboards. What? So we shouldn't improve on our mistakes, right? The concept is so bad that we shouldn't even try because no one (again, assumptions) can build good dashboard. C'mon..
[+] [-] skybrian|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] error54|11 years ago|reply
If you've ever run service where you're anticipating a large traffic spike and you need to monitor server stats, real-time statistics are invaluable.
[+] [-] jwillgoesfast|11 years ago|reply
YES! If you're building a dashboard, don't answer the question "what data do I have?" or "what does the brass say this should be?" But instead, get out and talk to users, find out what data is most important to them, think outside the box, throw some different ideas out there and see what sticks with users.
[+] [-] rdtsc|11 years ago|reply
I think many have recognized the demand for dashboards and sprung a cottage industry around it. That is demands often are perverted and sometimes it just comes from an exec wanting to see some "action" or gaining "visibility". They have VC money to spend and will spend money for moving "realtime" colors on the screen.
For the dashboard creators, that is all they need. If someone buys is it. They will keep making it.
On other hand, to disagree with the author. "So what?" People want shitty realtime moving colors because they look cool. Heck, have you seen the crap people pay for in app stores, farmville type games on Facebook and so on. One can criticize the providers and consumer of that crap. Yet they are happily transferring money and product between each other.
[+] [-] dunmalg|11 years ago|reply
Sometimes we just want a moving graph that looks important, so the boss knows we're working on something.
[+] [-] paulojreis|11 years ago|reply
Yup. I can't even begin to imagine the amount of time lost on executive or PM useless whims (and how much good could have been achieved with that time and resources).
[+] [-] capkutay|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] error54|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|11 years ago|reply
While the OP hits lots of points squarely, I strongly disagree about the "no one needs real time". In particular, any service that does onboarding or signups would be really well served to track new users through the getting started process.
I live in the custom dashboard that I built for my startup.
Screenshot: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s16/sh/c8cdeadc-643d-4028-b58...
It tracks every single signup from provisioning through to successful setup. It lets me easily see if people are flailing trying to get things working and if it looks like they are I send them a personal email like: "It looks like you might be having some issues with picking an email approver address, can I help?"
Having this real-time insight into customer issues lets me provide much better support and from an ROI basis is incredibly worthwhile.
The actual service: https://addons.herokuapp.com/expeditedssl
[+] [-] grimtrigger|11 years ago|reply
This is probably the only reason many dashboards exist. They're not there to be useful, but to provide proof that the gears are turning behind the system.
[+] [-] reitanqild|11 years ago|reply
This is so arrogant. If your customers are not interested in target demographics then ok. Generalising this to everyone is not ok.
[+] [-] com2kid|11 years ago|reply
That said, I have an amazing PM who has customized the living heck out of our TFS Dashboard such that it is useful.
Most fun of all is seeing our "daily bug resolved as fix rate" and "daily bug incoming rate". Seeing them as flat numbers in boxes is, IMHO, more useful than seeing them as on a graph.
But yeah, the dashboards I see other teams using? The worst is a bug tracking dash that is updated once every 4 hours. During crunch week, it serves to do not but spread chaos and confusion.
[+] [-] wyc|11 years ago|reply
Assuming the author meant car, this would be very dangerous (i.e. irreversible engine damage): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redline
[+] [-] paulcothenet|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jodrellblank|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VLM|11 years ago|reply
Dashboards are an astrological tool. Here is an elaborate and complicated process you don't understand to generate numbers that are devoid of meaning, to dilute responsibility when you make a decision that turns out to be wrong.
The article misses this point entirely. A good dashboard from the end user perspective can be used as numerical backup for any arbitrary decision at any time. The author just doesn't get it. Thats why the author is confused by the "just keep adding stuff until I can always use it to justify whatever I want to do".
This is how dashboards are used in practice, this is their actual reason for existing. This is why money is spent on them.
The article is like a debunking of astrology, "well see here, based on the gravitational constant and the distance to this orange vs venus, the square results in ..." and the boss replys with "shut up I don't care about reasons I decided to go to war with eastasia and we've always been at war with eastasia and my astrologer always had my back, and apparently you don't, so lets discuss the effect of all this gravitational formula stuff on your career prospects vs backing me up which you're paid as a yes man to do..."
[+] [-] TheAwesomeA|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sejje|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siganakis|11 years ago|reply
The dirty little secret of the business intelligence / dashboard industry is that no one logs into them.
A daily email helps with this problem, as people tend to read emails, even if its only a glance.
[+] [-] akurilin|11 years ago|reply