Before Everything Became a Dashboard

Overview

In 2007, dashboards were not yet the default answer to every question involving data.

This one was developed for a private asset-management practice that needed a clearer way to see what mattered across a growing volume of financial information. Inspired in part by Panic's wonderfully economical approach to interface design, we explored a modular system of independent information panels: different measures, different views, one coherent picture.

The ambition was less more data than better situational awareness. Information could be assembled according to context and priority, allowing the interface to adapt without requiring the underlying system to be redesigned each time.

None of this sounds particularly revolutionary today. That is rather the point.

In the years that followed, the dashboard became ubiquitous — and then, arguably, rather too ubiquitous. Charts multiplied, gauges proliferated and perfectly innocent datasets found themselves squeezed into executive cockpits whether they wanted to be there or not.

Seen now, the project is interesting less as an early example of a dashboard than as an exploration of the problem dashboards were supposed to solve: how do you reduce complexity without simply decorating it?

The interface has aged. The question hasn't.