Most of the dashboards I designed at Euromonitor International examined annual data and the system refreshed annually. However, in 2011/12, the company released a new data set for key economic indicators that highlighted monthly and/or quarterly data sets. From the data visualisation side, we needed a new design that could accommodate and showcase the new product. And it had to be designed and built quickly.
The Monthly/Quarterly Dashboard, or MQV for Monthly/Quarterly View, did all of that. I used the model from the Industry Overview Dashboard, i.e. category selectors on the left and a map on the right, to allow users to navigate to various metrics, e.g. exchange rates. This had the dual advantage of being a familiar design for our users while also allowing us to repurpose numerous designed and built components.
However, unlike our earlier versions, we used the bottom portion of the interface to draw attention to the timeline of data. We replaced the three bottom components with one interactive timeline. And since we had begun to realise the weakness of maps as navigational components, we added a geography selector as well.
The default view shows the change over the previous period and then the history of the metric over time
We added interactivity to the timeline component to allow users to see the precise values
Adding the ability to change geographies without use of the map significantly improved the user experience