Dashboards designed for clarity’s sake
Taking dashboard design up a notch has proven to be a pressing need, as Synergy Business Intelligence discovered when it recently announced its upcoming “Best Practice Dashboard Design” workshops.

“The response has been overwhelming,” said managing director, Christo Bredenkamp. “We all know that dashboards can be functional, but more and more users are realising that, in the right hands, the same dashboards have the potential to be powerfully compelling and keenly thought-provoking.”

Bredenkamp said that drawing from industry insights and techniques, and adhering to the famous Leonardo da Vinci declaration that “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”, Synergy has refined the process to build dashboards that can add the full extent of their value.

“Simplicity, by definition, is the reduction of complexity; a refining process so complete that there is truly nothing else to add, and nothing else to take away.

However, simplicity is not merely ‘less is more’ – rather, it is about achieving clarity, which comes from constant refinement.

“It is precisely that clarity which dashboard designers and developers strive for; that ability to depict ever-increasing and complex data in bite-sized chunks, on a 15-inch piece of glass.”

Bredenkamp cautioned, though, that such simplification did not dare translate into ‘”dumbing down” either, as dashboards need to be enlightening, engaging and provide a clear “call-to-action”.
He said Synergy BI is faced with this challenge on a daily basis, across many industries, “but we’ve garnered essential techniques along the way, techniques which we want to share at our workshops”.

Among the workshop topics will be:
  • information is beautiful vs information is enlightening;
  • all charts are not created equal;
  • lie, damned lies and statistics;
  • 3D, gauges, thermometers and pies – useful, really?
  • chart junk and the data to ink ratio; and
  • before you start throwing charts on a page, make sure you can answer these questions…
“We are thrilled with the response we have had to the announcement of our workshops, and are equally thrilled to invite more designers and developers to join us for a two-hour presentation which, we believe, will leave them freshly inspired and equipped for their next dashboard creation,” Bredenkamp added.

Breakfast workshops will be held in Cape Town (11 October at The Taj Hotel);  Johannesburg (12 October at the Midrand Conference Centre) and Durban (13 October at the Durban Country Club). Registration is essential.