Thursday, June 21, 2012

Creating an Efektïv dashboard display

Efektïv -- I'm coining this spelling as an homage to Ikea. What I want in a dashboard display is something clean, orderly and useful. To me, the ideal model of a perfect structure like this is any Ikea show suite. Liveable, but not "lived-in" looking. Easy to find any object required, just at a glance. That's what I want to create.


Here's a link to an article I'd like to take to heart:

So, that should be easy... what's my restriction? A difficult to use Sharepoint framework, with corporate branding already in place and unchangeable. Let's see what I can do.

Starting with the basics, I need to focus the site. Focus it down to have a point. Right now it's cluttered, but the focus I'm aiming for is to turn this into an easy to use team task list. So, at a glance, anyone on the team can see what tasks are assigned to them, and which ones are up for grabs.

Right now there are about a dozen views to see the data every way from Sunday, but too many views is complicating things. What I need is simplicity! It needs to be Ikea-clean. I may not be able to touch the corporate branding (ie: giant header) but I should be able to do something with the content itself.

So far, this is my bucket of boring. Everything is obscured, nothing stands out, and the left nav is a bunch of clutter.