The word “dashboard” originally referred to
the board at the front of a horse drawn carriage which shielded the occupants
from mud spattered (“dashed”) up by the horses’ hooves.
The dashboard was retained in horseless
carriages. It became a convenient place to fix instruments so developed a new meaning
as an alternative to “instrument panel”
The word “dashboard” was adopted by business
information specialists somewhere around the early 1990s through the analogy
between a car dashboard and a collection of “controls” for monitoring
information.
The information use of the term “dashboard”
became increasingly widespread from around the late 1990s. Many system suppliers
took the car analogy a little too literally. Developers tried to recreate car
dashboard visual characteristics in information dashboard products. Some of
these products were visually stunning whilst at the same time being relatively
ineffective for their supposed primary purpose.
Such excesses have been reeled back in
slightly by the efforts of visualization gurus such as Edward Tufte and Stephen
Few
We are now at a point where widespread over-use
of the word “dashboard” has almost stripped it of any meaning
Use of terminology varies but the following
concepts can be distinguished:
A single screen (or page of paper) which
summarises at a glance the current position of one or more key measures for an organization
or enterprise: I call this a dashboard
A more extensive collation, perhaps showing
trends or a detailed breakdown of one or more key measures for an organisation or
enterprise, and quite likely including commentary: I call this a report
A collection of the key indicators for an organisation,
sub-organisation or enterprise: I call this an indictor set
One or more overall scores can be collated
to provide a summary of an indicator set: I call this a scorecard (the term “balanced
scorecard” is widely used but for me to agree to use it I would need to have it
explained how the balancing has been carried out)
A dashboard or report in which the user can
obtain different versions of the information by entering choices: I call this
an interactive dashboard or an interactive report
