They are Advertised like fast food.
Just like Fast Food, the data community has flashy but problematic advertising.
Analytical product...
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I've watched this exact problem happen so many times as I've worked. It's so hard to fight as well. Once your palate shifts over to high salt, high sugar, high fat Viz, it's hard to change back to whole meal, high fibre data. Data needs to drive decision and action.
That's why I've found 'low viz' data communication methods so interesting recently. Natural language output, categorical decision delivery, binary yes no icons. That's what's been driving my work recently.
I thoroughly love your commitment to the metaphor!
“High fat viz” is the perfect slang for the stuff that’s being relied upon.
Not sure if your take on dashboards being merely for a glance is accurate. In education we deal with a lot of different dashboards (in fact I design a few) and the data that gets projected is always looked at carefully by teachers and admin. So I guess it depends on context and setting for what the dashboard is for and who is seeing it. Not having a clear vision will make any tool, regardless of how intuitive it may be, feel empty. Noteworthy post though.
Great article. What's your perspective on the concept of the Executive Dashboard? The premise being that execs just want the summary?
Hi Eddie, I still think Dashboards have a place, just like I still think McDonalds is great :) and there are perfectly legitimate times for dashboards to exist to serve high level data needs, like a New Relic dashboard.
In terms of executive dashboards specifically, it would differ everytime, and the question is not "should blah person have dashboards" but more... how tricky is this data, how data literate is my audience, do they have the tools to then self serve some questions. And that last point is the kicker, if the exec doesn't have the tools to dive under the dashboard then they will take the dashboard at face value, regardless of type 1 / type 2 / sampling errors / data quality levels.