What do we mean by “dashboards”?

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