Decision makers love dashboard because it offers them snapshots of operation processes, marketing metrics, and key performance indicators. Moreover, dashboard provides just-in-time information. Executives can make rapid adjustment. However, dashboard may mislead decision makers. There are three possible traps.
- The important trap: dashboard doesn’t have sufficient information providing to decision process. This may be caused by software default measurement or the consultant who establishes the analysis and does not understand that business. Therefore, when creating dashboard, designer should know the business well and make sure all the information on the dashboard is useful and critical. Dashboard should show the priority of business. It should align with business goal and business model.
- The context trap: it is caused by designer’s subjective judgement. Although all the elements on the dashboard are true, they build up an analysis with bias or without full consideration. Therefore, interpreter and user of the dashboard to ensure that the most relevant and useful metric is conveyed.
- The causality trap: it is caused by misattributed causality. Designers may present the grouping or data that doesn’t have causality.
To avoid these traps, in my opinion, knowing the business well, understanding the user, and getting other’s opinions may help to create useful, thoughtful, and effective dashboard.
Reference: https://hbr.org/2017/01/3-ways-data-dashboards-can-mislead-you