When dealing with information systems, you always need to deal with reports and dashboards. There are various tools to generate them and countless ways to present. Companies are working hard to improve the presentation of information they have. Databases and file storage are getting bigger as we gather more information, over a longer period and since HD memory is getting so much cheaper, we have no reason not to save it all. And then we want to do something with it, right? Analyze it, present it to managers, produce knowledge out of data. How do you do it? Well one aspect is how you present this data, Stephen Few is a great reading on this topic, but this is not my focus.

My focus is on the questions. 

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What does the user want to know? What does she need to know? When I present a report or a graph to a manager and ask her – do you want this? I often receive a positive answer. Will she ever look at it again? Not so sure. While looking at it she was thinking – mm interesting, yes, maybe I will take a look at this type of report from time to time; it will give me XX information… but with the daily load of information she will never get to it. We must find ways to produce reports that will give real value. It is so easy to suggest reports, so difficult to suggest a good one.

Research about users’ goals is (or should) always part of our research phase. It is never easy because users are rarely explicitly aware of their goals. When dealing with tasks and processes you can usually get most of it from interviews, inquiry and analysis. But when it is about presenting information there are often two levels of findings. Some reports are easy to figure, they include information users may already use and users tend to know what they need. The next level is more difficult, this is information that could not be accessed before, complex reports that join different types of information (from different tables or data sources). You rarely get users to request it, but that doesn’t mean they will not gain from it. I find personas and storytelling helpful here; you need to see the world from your user perspective, not just to know them well but to feel them. You need good understanding and empathy for your user. Getting close to the user is an important part of being a good designer.