51–60 of 126 posts
The dirty little secret of the business intelligence / dashboard industry is that no one logs into them.
A daily email helps with this problem, as people tend to read emails, even if its only a glance.
Am I the only one that doesn't get the joke about what's wrong with "Last 14 days" and "Last 12 months"?
I've found that replacing a fancy dashboard of key stats with a simple daily email with 5-10 key numbers is far more valuable. The dirty little secret of the business intelligence / dashboard industry is that no one logs into them. A daily email helps with this problem, as people tend to read emails, even if its only a glance.
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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.
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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.
It can also come on for no apparent reason. Mine is on right now. Gas cap is tight, car is running fine. Starts right up, runs smooth, power is good, fuel economy normal. So I'm not going to take it into the shop. In this day and age we can have something more informative than a check engine light. Tell me what's wrong, or at least have a "verbose" option I can enable that will let me see WTF it thinks the problem is…
As far as a verbose option, if you pull into an O'Reilly's or other auto parts store they will lend you, for free, an OBD-II scan tool with which you can read out the exact error plus any corresponding sensor data(freeze frame).
If your check engine light isn't flashing, it's actually because your vehicle has detected an issue with your emissions equipment that means that the engine control module is not able to regulate emissions to within EPA requirements. There are various reasons why this could be the case, but it usually indicates an imminent failure.
For example, mine is currently on because it's detecting a lean fuel condition in the cylinder bank when under high load, which means either that my fuel injection system is not able to keep up or that my throttle is letting too much air into the intake manifold. My car is still drive-able, but I definitely need to have it looked at because my fuel pump or injectors could be going out or my throttle could be faulty.
The point is that it's not a scam, it's providing you useful, predictive information. You just need to know how to retrieve it.
Am I the only one that doesn't get the joke about what's wrong with "Last 14 days" and "Last 12 months"?
the option right below it mentions "This year.."
That said i've seen "this year" used to mean last 12 months as well...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It can also come on for no apparent reason. Mine is on right now. Gas cap is tight, car is running fine. Starts right up, runs smooth, power is good, fuel economy normal. So I'm not going to take it into the shop. In this day and age we can have something more informative than a check engine light. Tell me what's wrong, or at least have a "verbose" option I can enable that will let me see WTF it thinks the problem is…
It mentions the OMTM, One Metric That Matters. When you focus your effort to one number, things get much better.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It can also come on for no apparent reason. Mine is on right now. Gas cap is tight, car is running fine. Starts right up, runs smooth, power is good, fuel economy normal. So I'm not going to take it into the shop. In this day and age we can have something more informative than a check engine light. Tell me what's wrong, or at least have a "verbose" option I can enable that will let me see WTF it thinks the problem is…
So, for a trivial cost you can get your verbose option. Most people are not going to have any knowledge or desire to have this information, so it's a silly feature to include.
>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…
Perfect example of this are the people who drive with an automatic and somehow manage to stay just below a shift point much of the time, meaning that the engine is at a higher RPM than it needs to be and could be consuming more fuel and wearing faster as a result.