Discussion 1 (DTDW23)

[Liz Lewis]

Is the WHO local maternity dashboard really a dashboard (based on what you’ve read in the textbook and Stephen Few’s article)? Why or why not?

[Marina Lent]

to me, it looks like a spreadsheet with highlights.

[Marina Lent]

dashboards PRESENT the data, spreadsheet PROVIDES them

[Marina Lent]

danger of dashboard presentation is to forget (or not know in the first place) the limitations of the data.

[Rachel Bedenbaugh]

Prior to our readings, I would have said yes this Figure does represent a dashboard – it’s data presented in a way that uses red/yellow/green to indicate areas that could be a concern (yellow) and those that already are a concern (red). But after our readings, I would now say no, it isn’t really a dashboard, but more the data/spreadsheet that should be used to populate the dashboard.
– It’s not a high-level summary as it provides monthly breakdown of each KPI and the yearly total
– It doesn’t provide any analysis or “conclusions,” – it’s just data presented and highlighted in different colors.
– It doesn’t appear to be customized, although the article did discuss that hospital staff in the OB unit were involved in its creation/determining KPIs
– Although the colors are “visual” and help to ID the areas of concern – a graphic of some sort would do a better job of visualizing the areas for improvement.

[Keianna Lopes]

The WHO Maternity Dashboard appears to be intended as a dashboard however, there is no at a glance information. It is not simple it is very complex and a lot of information not organized in any way to quickly understand the information. This could almost be a subset of data collected. Also this is a trend over time and does not show us what we should be taking away from the information provided.

[Tomeka Frieson]

I agree with the above statements. While creating a dashboard does seem to be the intended goal of the WHO Maternity Dashboard study (i.e., they meet some of the criteria like having a visual display and, presumably, the most important information all displayed on one screen), this dashboard does not provide an at-a-glance view or graphical visualization of the data. Moreover, it is not clear whether all the data presented are relevant to their goal, and they do not present any predefined conclusions. As Mariana mentioned earlier, the WHO’s version of the dashboard is much more like a well-organized spreadsheet.

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