There are 3 main options for what can go on the dashboard, eachh of which has their own pros and cons
- Show the most recent activity accross all projects
- Break down activity based on type
- Break down activity based on project
I will no discuss each of these 3 options in detail:
Show recent activity accross all projects
With this method, there would be a reverse chronological list of activity accorss all your projects. It would essentially be a long list in the form “Person A done action B on Project C on the date D” with relevant links to the user, item and project. Although this would allow the user to see all activity accross all projects at a glance, it could also easily end up being quite a mess which would make it harder to quickly take in the information, which is the whole point of the dashboard screen, to quickly and easily see what’s going on.
It could possibly be structured in a table which would make it a little easier to see what’s going on, as the uer, project, date etc would be in columns, so it makes it much easier to scan. This could also be broken down by day instead of just being one long list.
Break down activity based on type
In this design, each differant item, such as tickets, tasks, files etc, would have it’s own section, either as a heading or a tab. This would then allow the user to check the activity only on items they’re interested in. So if theyonly want to see activity related to tickets, then they don’t have everything else cluttering the interface
Break down activity based on project
Similar to the above, but having seperate tab/section for each project. This seems kind of redundant, as this information will be on the project overview page.
Thoughts?
So what are your thoughts on these options, or something completely differant? Do you even want a dashboard screen or just dive straight into your projects?
A few quick points on mistakes when designing dashboard screens taken from Consolidata which I will need to bear in mind
- Clutter – the more items on a dashboard, the more likely it is that important information will be missed
- Too many colours – the more colours, the less likely that important changes in colour will be missed. Issues with colour blindness need to be borne in mind
- Relevancy – having more data that is not important detracts from the important data
- Large graphics – many dashboards waste space by using large ‘dial-like’ images that take a lot of space but don’t give much informational value
