The agency is seeking to establish a performance reporting dashboard with a clear graphical data display that appeals to the general public.
The Process
Click and expand each step in the process for more information and to access useful resources.
The Big Picture
Getting Started
🅐 Understand your performance data and information
The agency has organized its performance data to align with its current business plan. Performance is reported in four broad categories: construction, operations, maintenance, and management. A wealth of performance data is collected within each category as part of routine program- and agency-level management requirements.
🅑 Ascertain significant information to be communicated
It is not possible or desirable to use the dashboard to report a great number of performance measures. It will be necessary to identify a small number of significant measures. In this case, the agency needs to identify the information that drives strategic decision-making, no more than two core measures in each of the four categories. It is also possible to add detail by reporting a single core measure with varying scope (for example, by reporting the same measure for the interstate and for all public roads). However, it's important to avoid the tendency toward adding more measures to address all aspects of performance. For the purposes of the dashboard, the agency will also report its targets, where applicable.
🅒 Create the context for communicating information
Care must be taken in selecting measures to report. Within each category, important choices must be made. For Construction, the agency will report the percentage of construction projects completed on time and the percentage of construction projects completed on budget. These figures are not weighted by project budget expectation, a topic of some internal discussion. For operations, the agency will report two core measures. The first is total annual vehicle hours of delay, in millions. The second is the number of traffic fatalities for every 100 million vehicle miles traveled. Expressed as a rate, this number is averaged over a three-year period, on a rolling basis. The two measures reported for maintenance are the percentage of pavement in fair or good condition and the percentage of bridges in fair or better condition, weighted by bridge deck area. For management, the agency reports a single measure, a ratio of expected to actual costs for all projects.
Successful communications resemble a conversation with real person – it's not about addressing something impersonal. Turning abstracts like “the public” into “someone who perceives a problem with transportation system performance and visits the site to learn what the agency is doing to address it” will help focus the effort.
🅑 Determine How Best to Engage the Audience
Take thinking personally one step further. Personalize the target audiences. Do they want a quick summary (probably) or do they have the time and inclination to study details (possible, depending on their personal investment in the topic)? Thinking about how friends, family, and colleagues engage with information will help to define the best media for the job. The dashboard should be designed to provide the quick summary that meets most customers’ needs, while also supplying more detailed contents through the user interface.
🅒 Describe the Key Message
In 15 words or less, what’s the main takeaway? The bottom line is: the agency is committed to transparency and accountability in reporting progress towards achieving its strategic and operational goals.
🅓 Establish Clear, Measurable Goals
It is important to assess whether a communication effort is working. This requires an understanding that communication is about reaching a target audience and being understood – not necessarily about management actions being taken. For this online dashboard the measures will be traditional online marketing metrics, scaled based on the size of the state, history of past publications, etc. Example metrics include: total visits, bounce rate, etc.
🅔 Compile the Communications Plan
Once the measures, context, audience, message, and media are established it is time to write up a plan. This will be the document that guides all that comes next so it's advisable to engage stakeholders as much as possible at this stage. The plan should include a high-level conceptual description of the dashboard and its desired functionality, design, and information architecture.
🅕 Write the Creative Brief
Using the communication plan, develop a one- to two-page document that provides the basis for evaluating creative concepts. What’s the feel? What style is appropriate? What limitations – words, colors, format, etc. – does the creative team need to know about? The brief should include links to existing performance dashboards, annotated with comments about the features the agency would like to retain or adapt, and those features that are not priorities for the agency.
🅐 Draft Text and Sketch Out Several Possible Visual Presentation Ideas
Brainstorm alone or with a group. Think of ways to achieve the objectives of your communications plan. Let the ideas flow uncritically. Ideally at this point it is possible to draw up three treatments that would work. Because your communications plan included links to existing performance dashboards, annotated with comments about the features the agency would like to retain or adapt, you may want to start with a basic cut-and-paste exercise. The goal here is to develop successful concepts for site layout and user experience – you can address the technology constraints of specific platforms and development environments at a later point. At this stage, it is appropriate to sketch initial page or user-interface renderings as well as site-level wireframe schematics.
🅑 Review and Select Criteria Treatment that Best Meets Creative Brief Criteria
Now review the three best ideas against the creative brief. Which one meets all the criteria? Using the creative brief, circle back to stakeholders and make sure there is alignment on the concept. One common design challenge with online dashboards is that the reliance on gauges and dials as visual metaphors leads to a collection of colorful but low-density* data displays (low-density in this case refers to the fact that these graphics only capture a single dimension of performance).
This is where concepts turn into products – and it's just as important to be technically accurate as it is to have creative flair. To achieve this, technical staff (e.g. engineers, planners) and creative staff (communications, designers, developers) need a shared vision and common objectives. This is why the creative brief is so important. It provides a foundation for this collaboration. Because creating a dashboard is a complex development challenge, it is important have frequent reality checks where IT is able to confirm that the desired design can be successfully executed.
🅑 Finalize Communications Products
This is final critical QA/QC step. Be sure your information is accurate. Check that it is correctly produced. Then go back and look at that creative brief and communication plan once again – and make sure it's still on target. Because this effort is designed to develop an online dashboard it not only involves designing a finished product, it also involves designing a workflow for effectively providing and managing the data required to support that product. This means considering how the design will adapt going forward as targets, timeframes, responsible parties, data formats, software packages, and media platforms change.
🅒 Prepare Materials for Different Usage and Media
Now it's time to complete the technical steps to prepare the creative product for dissemination. Check and double check file sizes, colors, permission to use images, and anything else that needs to be in order. One advantage of digital production and distribution is that corrections and edits can be made on an ongoing basis. The corresponding challenge is that these products must be planned and maintained for a much longer lifecycle. Over that longer lifecycle users’ requirements can be expected to change and it is important to think ahead. For example, providing a consistent experience across desktop, tablets, and smartphones is more important than ever before.
Step 4 Links:
The links below help provide insight into the development process for complex web applications – and the creative process behind innovative data visualizations. A checklist helps you stay organized as you apply the lessons to your own products.
🅐 Schedule the Distribution of Your Communications Products
Execute your media plan. Coordinate distribution, making sure you have the right materials for the right medium. Double check run dates with publications, launch dates with your team, and calendar dates with yourself! Will the developer deliver your product in time? Are you ready to go live as soon as the board meeting is over? In this case, your media plan will depend heavily on social media to drive traffic to your new web platform.
🅑 Implement Your Distribution
You’ve launched. Congratulations! Is there time-sensitive information? Make sure you’re updating it. Will the information be around for a while? Perhaps you want to consider freshening it to keep it relevant. Failing to anticipate the requirements of long-term maintenance can severely limit the value of the finished product (for example, if the resources needed to keep data up-to-date are lacking).
As you begin getting feedback, check it against your plan. Is it working the way you had intended? Then maybe just a tweak or two is needed. Is your audience missing the key message? A more major overhaul might be necessary. In this effort, it may be useful to compare your visitor statistics with those of a peer agency that maintains a similar dashboard site, focusing specifically on measures of engagement such as time-on-site and bounce rate.
🅑 Review and Assess Communications
Finishing your effort is really the start of the next one. What are the lessons learned? Do you have confidence that the data you need will be available? Even if the answer is “yes,” it is worth considering what enhancements would deliver the greatest bang for the buck. Once these issues have been addressed, attention can turn to an ancillary set of questions: Have you defined the right target audience? Is your message clear? Were your goals appropriate? Did the visuals serve to enhance communication? How well did the team work together? Where were the problems? This information helps you plan better for the next round.
The Big Picture
Step 6 Links:
As shown in the presentation linked below, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is not only enhancing the capabilities and appearance of its performance reporting to better meet customers' needs – the agency will also make the code and documentation available to help other agencies continue to advance the state of the practice.
