Re-examining dashboard development: putting the horse back in front of the cart

Abstract

During this age of data proliferation, heavy reliance is placed on data visualisation to support users in making sense of vast quantities of information: Finding the signal in the noise (Silver 2012). Informational Dashboards have become the must have accoutrement for Higher Education institutions with various stakeholders jostling for development priority. Due to the time pressure and user demands, the focus of development process is often on designing for each stakeholder and the visual and navigational aspects. Dashboards are designed to make data visually appealing and easy to relate and understand; unfortunately this may mask data issues and create an impression of rigour where it is not warranted. This paper explores an alternative approach to data visualisation and dashboard design. It suggests that the first step should be the development of an enriched database which integrates key indicators from various data sources and then acts as a database for various dashboards. The emphasis is thus on the underlying value-added database which can then be overlaid with any user interface for dashboard generation for a multitude of stakeholders. The enriched central database thus becomes a menu of available quality assured data which can easily be drawn into various dashboards at various levels of granularity ensuring improved data quality management, responsiveness, efficiency and flexibility. A case study is employed illustrating the benefits, showcasing various views developed for diverse stakeholders employing this approach.