1) Dashboards are designed to provide at-a-glance monitoring of key performance indicators to maintain situation awareness. They display the most important information needed to achieve objectives in a consolidated format. 2) Effective dashboard design considers the limitations of human working memory and perception. Dashboards should use visual elements like lines, bars and points that enable easy comparisons. They should also minimize visual complexity and data sets. 3) When designing dashboards in Salesforce, principles of visibility, prioritization, and actionability should be applied. Dashboards provide overviews and should link to additional detail reports when needed.

1. Dashboard design – displaying data for at-a-
glance monitoring
Salesforce.com Finland User Group meeting
Sept 24, 2014
Host: If Vahinkovakuutusyhtiö Oyj
Robert Nykopp
Business Analyst
Metso Minerals
robert.nykopp@metso.com / robert.nykopp@gmail.com
+358 40 7254542

2. © Metso© Metso
• We are a leading process
performance provider, with
customers in the mining,
construction, and oil & gas
industries
• Our focus is on the continuous
development of intelligent
solutions that improve
sustainability and profitability
• We employ around 16,000
professionals in 50 countries
• Our shares are listed on the
NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Ltd
51%
Services business’ share of
2013 net sales
This is Metso
20%
Mining and
Construction
80%
Automation
2013 Net Sales EUR 3.9 bn

3. © Metso© Metso
Table of contents
1. What is a dashboard
• Dashboards support the performance monitoring process
• Dashboard design principles applied to SFDC
2. Limitations of working memory and perception
• Effective graphical means of showing data
• Ineffective graphical means of showing data
• Effective Salesforce components
3. Further resources

4. © Metso© Metso Source: Stephen Few material, Edward Tufte
It is not the following: displays that are used for data exploration and
analysis, portals, or reports used to look up specific facts – but it can
link to them.
We can think of a dashboard as an information display that’s
designed to help people maintain situation awareness (SA).
The terms was originally applied to military pilots whose
missions required an especially high level of awareness of
the details unfolding around them.
What is a dashboard
The purpose of a dashboard is to monitor what is going on
”Basically, situation awareness (SA) is being aware of what is happening
around you and understanding what that information means to you now and
in the future. This awareness is usually defined in terms of what information
is important for a particular job or goal. The concept of SA is usually applied
to operational situations, where people must have SA for a specified reason,
for example in order to drive a car, treat a patient, or separate traffic as an air
traffic controller. Therefore, SA is normally defined as it related to the goals
and objectives of a specific job or function.”

5. © Metso© Metso
Monitoring information to manage performance involves four stages:
1. Update high-level situation awareness
2. Identify and focus on particular items that need attention
a. Update awareness of this item in greater detail
b. Determine whether action is required.
3. If action is required, access additional information that is needed,
if any, to determine an appropriate response.
4. Respond.
Dashboards support this performance management process.
Information that cannot support action to maintain or improve performance does not belong
on a dashboard.
An information display that does not support this process is not an effective dashboard.
Dashboards support the performance monitoring
process
Source: Perceptual Edge
Dashboard
Explore /
drill down to
reports
SFDCAction

6. © Metso© Metso
Dashboard design principles applied to SFDC
Keep the number of components to a
minimum per dashboard, choose function
over visual flourish, and favor effective means
of showing information(tables, bars, lines).
A dashboard is a visual display
of
the most important information needed
to achieve one or more objectives
that has been
consolidated on a single computer screen
so it can be
monitored at a glance
If it doesn’t support action to maintain or
improve performance, scrap it
Ideally, the viewer does not need to scroll
around to see the information. Have the most
important information readily available
A dashboard provides an overview. It must be
able to quickly point out something that
deserves attention and might require action. It
needn’t provide all the details necessary to
take action, but it should make getting to that
information as easy and seamless as
possible (use SFDC drill down capabilities)
SFDC / dashboard design implicationDashboard definition

7. © Metso© Metso
Limitations of working memory and perception
Three types of memory:
1. Iconic - like graphics buffer of a computer
It briefly stores what the eyes see until it is moved into short-term memory for conscious
processing or discarded as nonessential
2. Short-term (aka working) memory - like RAM
Readily accessible for high-speed processing but limited in capacity. Takes in
information from senses and also combines new info with long-term memory information
3. Long-term memory- like hard drive
Info that’s deemed worthwhile for later use is moved from short-term to long-term
memory where its stored and indexed
Date Author Title Source: Perceptual Edge7
Let’s not overload short term memory

8. © Metso© Metso Date Author Title Source: Perceptual Edge
Example: graph that exceeds the limits of short-term memory
Short-term memory is where sensemaking happens
Nine separate data sets can’t be concurrently held in short-term
memory
If you want someone to make sense of a graph as a whole, limit
data that encode distinct meanings to seven at most or to be
safe, no more than five
Limitations of working memory and perception
Let’s not overload short term memory
8
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Jan Feb Mar Apr May June
Fictional sports store revenue
Bikes
Footballs
Running shoes
Hiking shoes
Supplements
Underwear
Gym
Ice skates
Hockey sticks
kEUR

9. © Metso© Metso
Limitations of working memory and perception
What do you see here?
Date Author Title Source: Stephen Few, coolbubble.com9

10. © Metso© Metso
Limitations of working memory and perception
Did you see the dolphin?
Date Author Title10

11. © Metso© Metso
Limitations of working memory and perception
Can you spot the dolphin now?
Date Author Title Source: Stephen Few, coolbubble.com11
. . . There are certain limits to memory and perception, so let’s
design dashboards in a way that plays to the mind’s strengths

12. © Metso© Metso Date Author Title Source: Stephen Few’s material, Salesforce
Line length
(example: bars in bar graph)
2-D position
Points
Effective graphical means of showing data
Most powerful attributes of
visual perception for show-
ing quantitative values
12
Visual attributes not included:
color, shape or size
Thus, four types of objects
work best for encoding
quantitative data
Lines
Bars
Boxes
Implications for choosing
Salesforce dashboard
components
Effective SFDC components
Graphical:
Non-graphical:
Less effective SFDC components

13. © Metso© Metso
1 ?
Date Author Title Source: Stephen Few
You can tell that second circle is
bigger, but how much bigger is it?
Ineffective graphical means of showing data
2-D area
13
It’s exactly 16 times the 2-D area of
the smaller circle. You might have
guessed a different amount. Our
ability to compare 2-D areas is not
well-developed

14. © Metso© Metso
Ineffective graphical means of showing data
2-D area: Pie/donut chart example
Date Author Title14
At a glance, you can tell that ”Other
fixed income” is the biggest, and that a
% share of a total is being described,
but beyond that it is difficult to make
meaningful sense of the data (because
sensemaking of graphical data
happens through comparisons)
For example, how much bigger/smaller
is Money market than Equities?
It’s hard to tell that money market is
16% of the total, i.e. 2% smaller than
Money market but 5% bigger than
Equities, and 16x bigger than Other
(1%)
A donut chart is only a pie chart with
the center cut out
Other fixed
income
Public sector
Money market
Equities
Other
Investment allocation of a fictional
insurance company
Other fixed income
Public sector
Money market
Equities
Other
Note: a donut chart is simply a pie chart with the center cut out

15. © Metso© Metso
Ineffective graphical means of showing data
2-D area: Pie/donut chart example. Column/bar supports comparison
and making sense of data better
Date Author Title15
Column chart: more effective
1%
11%
16%18%
55%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
OtherEquitiesMoney
market
Other
fixed
income
Public
sector
Less flashy, but you can immediately see each data
point’s relative ranking and approximate size
Pie/donut chart: less effective
Investment allocation of a fictional
insurance company
Other fixed income, 55%
Public sector, 18%
Money market, 16%
Equities, 11%
Other, 1%
Investment allocation of a fictional
insurance company

16. © Metso© Metso
Tables are often useful when you want to see exact data or look up
individual values / leads / opportunities / accounts etc
Effective Salesforce components: tables
Tables are useful when you need exact data or have few data points
16
5. Losses - last 60 days
Opportunity
Name Win/Loss Reason
Sum of
Forecast
Value (EUR)
Lost
opportunity 1
Price xxxM
Lost
opportunity 2
Delivery terms xxM
Lost
opportunity 3
Price; Technical
Solution
xxM
Lost
opportunity 4
Technical Solution xM
Total EUR xxxM
Max. 10 values displayed, click to access full report
-How to concatenate (combine) fields so you can show more in table
Tips:
-How to show up to four columns in table

17. © Metso© Metso Date Author Title
Note that when you have very few data points, graphs usually waste
space and don’t showcase meaningful patterns; tables are often a better
choice then
Effective Salesforce components: graphs
Graphs work best when the message resides in the shape of the
data (patterns, trends, exceptions)
17

18. © Metso© Metso
Effective Salesforce components: special note on
scatter plot graph
You can use it to display correlation
A scatterplot does one thing, and it does it well: display correlations
We can see whether or not, in what direction, and to what degree two
paired sets of quantitative values are correlated
In this fictional example,
we can see that higher
temperature tends to
lead to higher ice cream
sales
Date Author Title18
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
0 5 10 15 20 25
Temperature (C)
Ice cream sales (EUR)

19. © Metso© Metso
Further resources: dashboard design checklist
19

20. © Metso© Metso
Further resources: books
I borrowed from Stephen Few’s and Edward Tufte’s books for this
presentation
20
More
philosophical
- changes the
way you look at
showing data
More practical
- helpful as a
reference of do’s
and don’ts

21. Date Author Title21