Is the Word ‘Dashboard’ Losing Its Value?
By: David Pires
Tags: Business Intelligence, Topicsindv, UX Design, Analytics, Dashboard

On a dedicated channel, #dvs-topics-in-data-viz, in the Data Visualization Society Slack, our members discuss questions and issues pertinent to the field of data visualization. Discussion topics rotate every two weeks, and while subjects vary, each one challenges our members to think deeply and holistically about questions that affect the field of data visualization. At the end of each discussion, the moderator recaps some of the insights and observations in a post on Nightingale. You can find all of the other discussions here.

Recently I had the opportunity to host the first Topic in Data Viz of 2020: Is the word dashboard losing its value? The data viz community came to the fore and provided lots of interesting discussions and points of view.

Before we dive in, we should define what a dashboard is. Stephen Few, one of the pioneers in the data visualisation space, defines a dashboard as “a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance.”

My initial reason for looking into this topic is that I believe that the word dashboard no longer carries the significance it once did. A few years ago, reports were all that we knew when referring to data visualisation, and then came dashboards; hip, novel, fresh, and innovative. But as tools, skills, and techniques evolved, it seems like dashboard is no longer the best terminology. In many visualization tools, we can create visualisations that are almost app-like, not to mention some of the fantastic work we see on the open source and custom side of things. Calling the work ‘dashboard’ can feel like a disservice to the fantastic work showcased in the Information is Beautiful awards or some of the work we see in the Tableau community, for instance. In summary, is calling something a dashboard lessening the value of the work created?

Why does this matter? Is it a case of semantics or is there an intrinsic reason why we should care about naming visualisations or data products? I believe that we should strive to achieve some commonality in the way we name our work as data visualisation practitioners, and look for ways to distinguish different types.

At first glance there seems to be an agreement that the word Dashboard is overused and has lost some of its value, but the bigger issue at hand is the misuse of the word as a catch-all. Dashboard is still the best way to describe some visualisations. For instance, hospitals and nurses may require a dashboard to display liquid levels and the readings of important sensors vital to the treatment of their patients.

We should, however, be more judicious in the way we label our work. Sometimes a report is just that, and many have found that other words still conveys the intended message. But as other terms such as scrollytelling and storytelling are used more often, we should aim to distinguish the various types of work we produce with different terminology.

Confusion seems to have derived from two distinct places: from companies, who started to use the word dashboard to mean anything that has a chart or some type of data information, often in lieu of reports. The second is vendors themselves such as Tableau and Splunk. Tableau’s own definition of a dashboard is an interesting one. The way it’s defined is a collection of charts or visualisation objects. Their desktop product has three main elements: views, dashboards, and stories, where a dashboard is a collection of views. As the Tableau community great and the platform became more widely used, so did the use of the word dashboard. For the longest time, the term fit; it was hip and new, and provided a degree of interactivity that could be argued as a difference from reports. But as misuse of the word grew, Tableau also evolved, and their current product is so focused on the ability to interact with the data by way of app-like experiences that a dashboard is almost like the old sofa in a new house.

Some of the most well-known alternative words include “interactive dashboard,” “vizapp,” “analytical application,” and “monitoring tool,” the latter describing intention.

Members of the Data Visualisation Society provided some additional ideas from their own experiences. For instance, Ryan Davis said, “I normally refer to my d3 dashboards as ‘interactive dashboards,’ which I think helps to distinguish them somewhat from a generic reporting screen.”

Nicole Edmonds believes that while the term shouldn’t be a catch-all, it still has its place. “I don’t think ‘dashboard’ should be a catch-all term for the broad spectrum of visualisation work that occurs, but I think contextually it still has its place for now.”

Elijah Meeks, on the other hand, said “At both Stanford and Netflix I actively pushed against ‘dashboards’ because I felt like it was a limiting term that didn’t catch the imagination of stakeholders.”

Consensus, however, is never easy to reach and while those are alternatives, we need to also consider the intended audience. For many stakeholders, the word dashboard is now something they understand and relate to. Whatever terminology we eventually adopt will take a while to be adopted and is bound to provoke some confusion. For example, “X application” conjures visions of the Apple Store and Google Play.

Finally, it’s interesting to note that even as we talk about terminology, one hurdle crops up time and time again. Limiting the amount of information to the absolutely necessary for the task at hand is always imperative. Perhaps that will be a topic for next time?!