E-tip: 5 Tips to Speed User Adoption of Mobile Dashboards

Home/Etips/E-tip: 5 Tips to Speed User Adoption of Mobile Dashboards

E-tip
5 Tips to Speed User Adoption of Mobile Dashboards

by BusinessObjects Expert staff

December 06, 2011

Increase user adoption of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius) using these five tips.

Just like any killer app, one of the greatest struggles in implementing dashboards is getting people to use them. Driving user adoption is equally about the technical aspects of the dashboard and how you roll it out. Here are five important technical considerations that will make users love your dashboard and not cast it aside.

Make your dashboards easy to find. Most users are too busy to look for dashboards, which is why the most visible dashboard wins. Your dashboards should not take more than a click to open up, whether this means an icon or link on a computer desktop or an easy-to-find app on a mobile device.
Use simple, clean, well-designed interfaces. Dashboard interfaces should be simple and intuitive, with minimal steps required to get at information. With many people accessing dashboards on mobile devices with small screens, it’s even more important for you to use screen real estate as economically as possible.
Give users what they need, don’t give them what they don’t. Keeping your dashboard simple and clean means providing the information users need, and nothing else. Identify the most critical key performance indicators to design around, and eliminate extraneous information that doesn’t provide value. As with all aspects of dashboard design, planning is key – beware of bloated requirements.
Keep datasets as small as possible. Smaller datasets maximize dashboard performance. Minimizing the number of round trips to the database helps ensure that users won’t become frustrated by long loading times.
Ensure that your results are accurate. Inaccurate data is the death knell of a perfect dashboard. Build trust in your dashboard from the start by ensuring that the back-end data being used is accurate, and the dashboard processes it correctly.

Note

This E-tip was adapted from Chris Hickman’s presentation, “Expert Guidelines for Mobilizing Your Dashboard,” at the Xcelsius Dashboards Bootcamp in November 2011 in Las Vegas. The conference was hosted by Wellesley Information Services, the publisher of BusinessObjects Expert. The next Xcelsius Dashboards Bootcamp takes place December 7-9 in Copenhagen, Denmark.