What's a dashboard?

[detangler]

Hello,

This question might not be limited to Excel but I was first introduced to it while working on some Excel reports. One day my co-worker told me that he's going to create a dashboard for the reports and I just drew a blank. As it turned out, it was just a summary of all of the reports in the workbook. I first thought it was just something that he made up. But I also happened to have to review a bunch of web based timesheet softwares, and one of them touted the "dashboard" feature... well, apparantly I'm way behind on the lingo... can someone tell me who started this trend? I'm dying to know! Thanks!!



Virginia

 

[RAM]

These three references shows up above your code. Try them out.

http://www.visualcalc.com/products/busintel.html

http://www.xcelsius.com/Land/g_dashboards.html

http://www.dundas.com/products/dash...on=Dashboards&Campaign=GoogleDigitalDashboard

HTH

RAM

 

[adam_neb]

When I first earned my 6σ Black Belt in '98 we used dashboards...
I think we used them even before that....

 

[detangler]

Thanks RAM... but I don't think my question's been answered yet. These sites detail their dashboard products but say nothing about the origination of the term. I'm just really curious as to when "dashboard" has become a computer terminology.

Perhaps I should rephrase my question. I guess I know what a dashboard is now. But the evolution of that term and any background information would really help.

I found this excerpt from one of my searches:

"Dashboard" is a nickname for an Executive Information System. This system gives the top execs just the information they really need to see, instead of pages and pages of data.

This helps me a bit because "Executive Information System" is a term that I'm familiar with.

 

[Joe Was]

When we moved away from DOS and Batch based Menu systems to GUI's, like the Windows environment, simple text lists did not fit the new model. So, graphical [menus] displays offering control over the functions available to the user of the application or portion of the application, became the norm.

Like: Give this Application a "Test Drive" get behind the wheel and see what you can do, with our new and improved model.

The alliteration to an Automobile is second nature to most people, so the key to a car is it's "DashBoard" hence the comparison!

A modern dashboard design can be most anything that gives options to the user. Most often it is a display of controls, frames or displays that acts as a control panel of sorts. The key is usually the selection of data options.

The term is quite old now, but recently I have seen it being used to represent a "What - if!" option or parameter list, as well. Here the user adds or picks data options to run or re-run a model. Where the list may truly be only a list, with no graphics at all!

 

[detangler]

Thanks Joe for the backgroud... and adam_neb for your feedback. I did some more searching online and found more related terms: dashboard reporting, dashboard-level metrics, business-activity monitoring (BAM), business process management (BPM), and the ubiquitous six sigma... so on and so forth. So yes it appears that that term has been around for quite some time.