As you've probably guessed by now, as we build up the number of variables on which we feel we need to make decisions and continue to add in more constraints to maintain reality and practicality in our decision-making process, decisions themselves can become increasingly complex. Similarly the ability to concisely provide visualizations of what is possible and what is ideal (and, conversely, what isn't) becomes increasingly challenging. Given this complexity and the perceived need in industry to nevertheless pursue means of visually assisting people in decision making, the concept of the dashboard has come into being and continues to gain popularity.

A dashboard, from a general decision-making perspective, is basically a computer interface that allows individual users to simultaneously view various depictions (i.e., presented structure) of data and information as well as various subsets of data (i.e., content) relevant to a particular task and user context. For illustration, Figure 13.1 shows four dashboards that I've personally put into use for research and/or consulting purposes in the recent past.

Two of these are highly oriented toward geographic (specifically logistics) tasks; the other two are designed with project management tasks in mind. You'll notice that each of these consists of multiple frames and multiple control/form-based interfaces. Some make use of parameterization forms more so than others. Some make use of graphs and charts predominantly, whereas others make rich use of tables with key indices summarized.