Real Time Monitor

Problem

Users need to be made aware of certain types of data values or relationships quickly enough to make an appropriate decision and act.

Solution

Use information visualization techniques that are typically found in “operational dashboards” to differentiate information that users should notice immediately, and if possible provide guidance for an appropriate immediate action.

Context

• The system is for real-time operational purposes (as opposed to for example, strategic, or analytical dashboards).
• Users need to make immediate decisions and take immediate actions based on certain noticeable changes in data.

Rationale

In time-critical situations, users do not have time to manually look at data and determine whether or not certain values or relationships between values merit immediate decisions. In many cases, by the time it is apparent that action should be taken, a user may only have a few moments to make a decision and act. Users need to be immediately made aware that a certain type of situation exists, as well as be provided with likely actions to take.

Implementation

If the history of values matter for decision making by the user, provide a historical line graph. Provide easy access to specific values along the line graph.

Known business rules and logic should be used to trigger noticeable alerts when relevant data values, threshold breaching, or multi-value relationships occur.

Visual design should be used to differentiate information based on priority for perception; i.e. the visual prominence of information should correspond to the order in which the user would want to notice the information (or the order dictated by business logic). For example, Gestalt design principles can be used to quickly draw attention to certain pieces of information through the use of different colors (and values within a color hue), shape, orientation, proximity, and weight (e.g. font size and treatment). These types of visual design treatments allow a user to quickly glance at a screen and be able to tell which information should be dealt with first. In addition, similar visual design principles should be used to indicate “calls to action” (e.g. relevant actions that could, or should be taken).

Help Me Get There

Infragistics has some tools that can jumpstart your efforts to implement this pattern. Broken down by technology, they are as follows.

ASP.NET

This pattern can be implemented using combination of the following ASP.NET controls: WebGrid, WebDataGrid, WebChart, WebGauge and a JavaScript polling mechanism to refresh controls with new data, or using Ajax panels like the Update Panel. Check out the samples browser to see it in action.

Silverlight

You can use the NetAdvantage for Silverlight XamWebGrid control for this.

Windows Forms

You can use the NetAdvantage for Windows Forms controls: WinGrid or WinGauge to implement this pattern.

WPF

You can implement this pattern using the NetAdvantage for WPF controls: XamDataGrid or XamChart. If you download the NetAdvantage for Win Client bundle, you can find a sample in the xamShowcase called xamTraderto see it in action.

 

Tags

Displaying Complex Data.