The laws of shitty dashboards • Hacker News Board

Re: The laws of shitty dashboards

#21

Post by com2kid » Sun, Sep 14, 2014, 9:43 PM UTC

I agree 99% of the time.

That said, I have an amazing PM who has customized the living heck out of our TFS Dashboard such that it is useful.

Most fun of all is seeing our "daily bug resolved as fix rate" and "daily bug incoming rate". Seeing them as flat numbers in boxes is, IMHO, more useful than seeing them as on a graph.

But yeah, the dashboards I see other teams using? The worst is a bug tracking dash that is updated once every 4 hours. During crunch week, it serves to do not but spread chaos and confusion.

Re: The laws of shitty dashboards

#22

Post by paulcothenet » Sun, Sep 14, 2014, 9:47 PM UTC

wyc wrote: post #18

"Take care dashboards for example. They use vast amount of real estate to display information that is useless 99% of the time. How often do you need to know the RPM on an automatic car? Can’t you just take that stupid dial out and put something useful instead?." Assuming the author meant car, this would be very dangerous (i.e. irreversible engine damage): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redline

Typo corrected. I'm not saying you should let the users go in the red without knowing. But does it have to be a big dial that takes a 1/3 of the dashboard?

Re: The laws of shitty dashboards

#23

Post by rdtsc » Sun, Sep 14, 2014, 9:55 PM UTC

> Or because the exec team somehow thinks “we need a dashboard”.

I think many have recognized the demand for dashboards and sprung a cottage industry around it. That is demands often are perverted and sometimes it just comes from an exec wanting to see some "action" or gaining "visibility". They have VC money to spend and will spend money for moving "realtime" colors on the screen.

For the dashboard creators, that is all they need. If someone buys is it. They will keep making it.

On other hand, to disagree with the author. "So what?" People want shitty realtime moving colors because they look cool. Heck, have you seen the crap people pay for in app stores, farmville type games on Facebook and so on. One can criticize the providers and consumer of that crap. Yet they are happily transferring money and product between each other.

Re: The laws of shitty dashboards

#24

Post by mehh » Sun, Sep 14, 2014, 9:55 PM UTC

packetslave wrote: post #20

mehh wrote: post #4

Most articles are shitty, this is an example of one. Most technical articles are written by someone blinkered by their specific experience which they feel is so wonderful that they should share with the world. Save the internet from such dross and write it on a piece of paper, roll it up and shove it up the ares your talking out of.

Such a useful, insightful comment. And how BRAVE you are to post it on an account you created just for the purpose. There does seem to be a fair amount of talking-out-the-"ares" (sic) around here, but it isn't coming from the article. By the way, the correct word in this situation is "you're"

The author deliberately wrote in a inflammatory style, I thought a response in a similar style was useful feedback for this 'brave' author.

I don't have a HN account and bored on a train, its a comment not an published and promoted article I've written, trying to dismiss my opinion based on grammar and typos, hmmm okay you've secured the moral high ground here really well,

Re: The laws of shitty dashboards

#25

Post by mehh » Sun, Sep 14, 2014, 9:59 PM UTC

nsmartt wrote: post #12

mehh wrote: post #4

Most articles are shitty, this is an example of one. Most technical articles are written by someone blinkered by their specific experience which they feel is so wonderful that they should share with the world. Save the internet from such dross and write it on a piece of paper, roll it up and shove it up the ares your talking out of.

Writing bad articles is a great way to move toward writing good articles. Writing in the public view is a great way to get feedback on your writing and the subjects you discuss—e.g. corrections, further education, etc. For some people, it also increase the pressure to improve. Vanity is only one possible reason for writing in the public view, and it's an exercise with large potential gains. Your perspective is entire…

Well perhaps slagging off the work done by others in a domain he is not an expert in isn't a sensible approach to writing articles.

Re: The laws of shitty dashboards

#26

Post by cvburgess » Sun, Sep 14, 2014, 9:59 PM UTC

aunty_helen wrote: post #19

>They also employ UX techniques that dates from a time where the only UI component you can use was a light bulb. If that red thing is critical, can’t you tell me right away what it means? This annoyed me a little bit. A check engine light is the perfect component for what it does. If it's on it means that something may be seriously wrong and that you're probably too stupid or ill-equipped to fix it. If it was somethi…

This is not true. The check engine light can come on in some cars if the gas cap is not screwed on tight enough - easily fixed yet treated as serious as a major engine malfunction.

Re: The laws of shitty dashboards

#27

Post by jschwartzi » Sun, Sep 14, 2014, 10:01 PM UTC

aunty_helen wrote: post #19

>They also employ UX techniques that dates from a time where the only UI component you can use was a light bulb. If that red thing is critical, can’t you tell me right away what it means? This annoyed me a little bit. A check engine light is the perfect component for what it does. If it's on it means that something may be seriously wrong and that you're probably too stupid or ill-equipped to fix it. If it was somethi…

It's also a great design because it needs to be highly reliable, and lights are probably the simplest things you can apply power to to generate a notification.

Also the note about the tachometer struck me as a little odd. The tachometer can tell you if your vehicle is running at a high idle, if the bumps you're feeling are misfires or the road, and it can also tell you whether you've accidentally left your vehicle in 3rd instead of drive after coasting to a stop. Finally, the tach can be used as a raw assessment of the load you're putting on an engine and you can optimize your driving habits according to that. It's not useless information and I much prefer it to an extra cluster of dummy lamps for all that stuff.

Re: The laws of shitty dashboards

#28

Post by coldcode » Sun, Sep 14, 2014, 10:01 PM UTC

I rail at Google Analytics dashboards all the time. You'd think I would be interested in today's or this week's or this month's numbers, yet there are no options for this in the calendar widget. People who write these things not talking with people who use these things in a meaningful way is a classic type of fail.

Re: The laws of shitty dashboards

#29

Post by capkutay » Sun, Sep 14, 2014, 10:04 PM UTC

From a product perspective, dashboards are pretty much expected and required. If you're building something in the 21st century, people expect a central thing that tells people what's going on. If your answer is 'hey dashboards are shitty', customers can use your competitors shitty dashboards and at least feel like they have more insight into whats going on in your product.

Re: The laws of shitty dashboards

#30

Post by error54 » Sun, Sep 14, 2014, 10:05 PM UTC

saosebastiao wrote: post #17

error54 wrote: post #7

>"Corollary: No one needs real-time" If you've ever run service where you're anticipating a large traffic spike and you need to monitor server stats, real-time statistics are invaluable.

If you know exactly what you are waiting for and you know exactly what you will do when it happens, then you should probably automate and optimize that process instead of spending your time building some fancy graphics. And if you don't know what you are waiting for nor what you will do about it, you don't need real time metrics.

What if it's an event that happens infrequently, say 2 times year? In such cases, it wouldn't be worthwhile to spend the time automating when it's easier/cheaper to take manual action.