Here's an enterprise dashboard that lets a school district track the demographics of its student and teacher population. This is a hot area right now.
The front page of the June 6, 2006 New York Times has the headline, "Court to Weigh Race as Factor in School Rolls". The article explains: "The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to rule on what measures, if any, public school systems may use to maintain racial balance in individual schools. The eventual decision on whether they can take race into account could affect hundreds of school systems in all areas of the country."
Now we all know that in order to maintain a balance of anything, we must first measure it. Sound familiar? Here's a hot tip for you enterprise dashboard experts out there. Mock up something similar to this dashboard, approach your local school board, and pitch them on why an enterprise dashboard is perfect for this situation.
This enterprise dashboard screenshot is for a high school down in Florida. While not the most gorgeous of designs, it does provide insight into the student gender ratio, the ethnic breakdown, and the test scores. Teacher information in terms of gender and race is available as well.
Homework: If you are not careful, a project like this can turn into a big political mess. All the elements are here to turn this into a powder keg – race, sex, reading test scores, etc. Be politically neutral and don't turn this enterprise dashboard into a tool for one camp or another. Brush up on the social issues with these books on education hotspots
So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy's favorite books.
