Partner Article

The Age of the Dashboard

With the advent of online and mobile software the age of the dashboard is well and truly here.

In the modern world of busy lives and tight schedules the user interface (UI) is always under pressure. Few of us have time to learn or navigate software, from social media to complex enterprise software, the consumer desires instantaneous functionality. Enter the dashboard.

An analogy we can all relate to is the smartphone market - ten years ago we all owned cameras, mp3 players and our mobile phones. The smartphone market has aggregated this functionality just as the dashboard provides a UI which aggregates all of a software suites functionality. This trend can be seen in all walks of life, our lethargy as a consumer has led to the boom of the supermarket, the smartphone and finally the humble dashboard.

So what is a software dashboard? Basically it is a UI which aggregates functionality in a spatial sense to create an efficient user experience. In software markets it can often be the difference between life and death - you only have to look at the uproar from the customer during the launch of the facebook timeline feature. If the customer does not like the UI then the product will falter. So is it just a question of design? Superficially, yes. But when you analyse it further, the design of a dashboard is informed by everything from market research to software development - it is also defined by functionality.

When it comes to enterprise software, functionality is obviously key to a dashboard’s success. It is the difference between seeing a return on investment in software, and a failed software implementation. So how is this functionality achieved? In Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), some ERP dashboards can be customised depending on the department which is using them, this gives businesses a great chance to increase the efficiency of workers by customizing ERP.

The dashboard has shaped our technology, and in doing so, has shaped our daily lives. So what is next for user-interfaces? Many suggest that the natural user interface (NUI) touted by Microsoft Kinect and Google Goggles provides the next revolutionary change in the UI market. NUI is the immersive, virtual-reality cousin of the humble dashboard but still has a lot to learn from it’s automotive-inspired relation.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by ERPfocus .