Data essentialism

Essentialism for Plato and Ancient Greeks was about the necessity of “essence” for identity and functioning. For Greg McKeown and modern literature, it is about “less but better”.

Essentialistic attitude does not encourage to get more things done within a limited time slot. On the contrary, it empowers to get the important things done.

How to build a proper dashboard

A proper dashboard shows the unobvious dependencies and empowers to take action. Multiple dimensions are to be kept in mind while building a dashboard.

Audience

The understanding of your audience is crucial to the advanced usage of your dashboard. In the first stage of the dashboard building, the requirements are to be collected.

1. Define the target audience a dashboard is supposed to be built for;
2. Define the objectives of the visualisation;
3. Define the frequency of the dashboard use (daily, weekly, monthly).

KPI

Define the main KPI for your visualisation.

1. Change the metrics, provided that they are under the stakeholders’ influence;
2. Keep the crucial points in mind.

The human’s memory can simultaneously keep 5 ballpark numbers under consideration. Users are not to be distracted by secondary insignificant numbers. The above is an application of data essentialism.

Storytelling

Demonstration of the KPI in a dynamic motion could give us additional insights. Given that metrics show the process, the order matters. A proper fairy-tale-like structure empowers focusing the user’s attention on the details which you want to emphasise.

The essentialistic data selection makes storytelling convincing.

Right Shape

Graphs and other visualisation tools appear as the most intuitive for data-seeking brains. However, for the purpose of avoiding misleading, the way a graph is presented is supposed to be as neutral as possible.

The most common manipulation methods are given in the following video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E91bGT9BjYk

Securing the right shape is particularly important in storytelling where the temptation of manipulation is always in place. High-quality storytelling must present accurate metrics in a neutral way and can easily be confused with another story.

The right shape includes the necessity of choosing the right set of relative metrics for accompanying the absolute one.

Feedback

The dashboard implementation process could be set up as follows:

1. The collection of the requirements and building a draft;
2. Developing the first iteration of the dashboard;
3. Collecting feedback from the stakeholders.

The feedback part is often neglected and underestimated. However, it is indeed crucial for understanding the processes and building strong relationships within the team.

Summary

Coming from the deep expertise in terms of context, essentialism is all about constant defining of the crucial metrics. A proper and objective data set up enables the accurate process reflection and empowers storytelling.