When done correctly, dashboards allow every person to contribute insights
December 16, 2024
“Dashboards are not just tools for data discovery, they are also for facilitating communication among people.” – Clare Harvey
Clare Harvey floated this concept out on LinkedIn in her review of a data visualization book in late 2024, and it brought back memories of Jonah Berger’s book, “Contagious: Why Things Catch On” from 2013 (I still have my copy on the bookshelf next to my desk). His thesis was that popularity, or virality, comes from STEPPS:
- Social Currency: people share things that make them look good or enhance their social status. (remarkable, novel, entertaining)
- Triggers: stimuli that prompt people to think about related things.
- Emotion: positive or negative
- Public: making products/behaviors more visible encourages imitation.
- Practical Value: people share useful information. (tips, how-tos)
- Stories: people don’t just share information, they tell stories.
Historically, dashboards were one-way communicators. They provided analysis/insights on data and told users “how they did” and “what they should do next”.
What we are doing at Marcus Thomas | Ecosystems with our PowerBI evolution, is creating two-way communicators. Dashboards that can receive input from users and answer questions in real time. But where we go in the future (very near, I hope) is a three(+)-way communication tool, which brings me back to Jonah’s STEPPS. We are approaching dashboard design in a way that encourages each user to be a sharer.
Our role as analysts is evolving. We aren’t here to tell you what to think, or what to decide, but to make sure you have the self-service data you need to develop your analytical social currency.
A popular topic in the data world is that “dashboards are dead.” I would argue that reporting dashboards are evolving into something more.
Dashboards can be like strategic plans, you create them and then they sit on a shelf unused. In reality, dashboards should be the ultimate empowerment tool in a company, allowing every person to bring insights to the board room. #DataDemocracy