What is a Digital Dashboard? A Digital Dashboard is an electronic interface that aggregates and visualizes data from multiple sources, such as databases, locally hosted files, and web services. Dashboards allow you to monitor your business performance by displaying historical trends, actionable data, and real-time information. Digital dashboard definition Digital dashboard: an information management tool that is used to track KPIs, metrics, and other key data points relevant to a business, department, or specific process. Through the use of data visualizations, dashboards simplify complex data sets to provide users with at a glance awareness of current performance. How To Create A Dashboard – The Top 14 Best Practices To Empower Your Business From data to digital dashboard design The final product, like the image above, takes time to design. An effective dashboard is built upon a solid foundation of good data; a compelling dashboard design distills large volumes of data into concise, meaningful, and actionable visualizations DIGITAL DASHBOARD BASICS: WHAT, WHY AND HOW TO GET STARTED Data is valuable, and information gained from data is definitely worth something. But, without an effective method for turning data into actionable information and extracting its value, even the most comprehensive data set can be worthless. Enter digital dashboards. By prioritizing collected data and showing the most critical information at a glance, digital dashboards make complex information more understandable and immediately actionable. What is a Digital Dashboard? A digital dashboard visually organizes the current status, historical trends, and key performance indicators of a system in an easily understood data visualization. It’s similar to the way a car’s dashboard keeps the driver constantly updated on the vehicle’s key performance indicators such as speed, mileage, engine temperature, and available fuel. A digital dashboard custom-built for your organization can provide a live stream of information to top-level personnel. A dashboard will allow end-users to work with complex data relationships and monitor key performance indicators even if they are not trained, data analysts. Immediate, critical awareness of essential company information gives savvy organizations a distinct edge in the decision making and management process. Why Use a Digital Dashboard? All of the data that goes into a digital dashboard is already available through other tools and reports. The advantage of using a Digital Dashboard is that even immensely complex information collected across multiple sources can be evaluated and digested quickly Case Study: Digital Dashboards in Action In 2012, the US Census Bureau was looking to visualize a complex set of employment data for the general public. Our team proposed a custom-built dashboard application that would serve the Bureau’s needs best. The Census Dashboard Application compared state employment data over time by age, industry, and location. It presents the data in an easy to understand, interactive format. The ability to screen vast volumes of information according to the end user’s specific needs – and then reveal insights in a format that is readily understandable – that makes the dashboard an unparalleled tool for data analysis WHAT IS DATA VISUALIZATION? What is Data Visualization? The term Data Visualization is used often and most often times techies like us will usually provide an overly complicated answer. The real basic meaning is the ability to graphically represent data. A better way of describing it is to visualize what we mean: Raw Data The biggest challenge for our clients is the ability to communicate this information into an understandable format for an audience outside or inside the organization. Add multiple data layers and data mashups, the explanation grows longer and more complicated ultimately loosing the attention of the intended audience.
