Comments on: Project Dashboard Icons

By: You Want It When? » Blog Archive » Almost There

You Want It When? » Blog Archive » Almost There — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 03:29:25 +0000

[...] That’s when I stumbled upon an article on a blog authored by Scott Selhorst. The article is titled “Project Dashboard Icons.” I liked it; it described an interesting metaphor for representing project status, and I like the idea of providing 2 indicators: one for current conditions and the other for future conditions. As it peeked my interest, I began to read more, and posted a comment to one. [...]

By: Eelco

Eelco — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 11:19:23 +0000

Also, check out http://www.waterproof.fr/wit/ for a bugtracking system that uses wheather icons to indicate the priority of a bug.

By: Scott Sehlhorst

Scott Sehlhorst — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 03:12:23 +0000

Great, Craig – and thanks for the link to the other icons!

By: craig

craig — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 02:17:51 +0000

Hello Liked the article and will be trying the idea this week. The icons you have pionted to are nice but a little difficult for luddites like me to manage. I searched and found free weather icons in gif format here; http://www.jschreiber.com/archives/2005/01/weather_icons_u.html

By: Luis Sergio Oliveira

Luis Sergio Oliveira — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 16:07:32 +0000

I like a lot the idea of adding “forecasting” to a status report. This improves the reporting a lot.

Regarding the sad and happy faces in the red green and yellow color, I think it is a matter of how precise you want to be. A good variation I’ve seen is plain green, half green and half yellow, plain yellow, orange, plain red.

Adding more levels increases the information, but, the forecasting is much better.

All in all, it may all be a lie. Some good idea I once saw in practice is choosing a sub-project each week and looking into it in detail. This avoids the yes-man in the midle that sweets is status reports so that he doesn’t get the attention and hopes others will do worst than he does.

By: Scott Sehlhorst

Scott Sehlhorst — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 15:48:29 +0000

Hey John, thanks for reading and commenting!

I like the idea of happy and sad faces, and it sounds like you usually have four levels too.

Does “sad green” mean not quite as good as “happy green?” Or does it mean “we’re green now, but not for long?” Sort of a wistful green?

How do you distinguish between schedule and progress? Can you give an example?

By: John Clark

John Clark — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 13:11:00 +0000

I have used the red/green/yellow colors from traffic lights, but instead have happy and sad faces in them. This gives me six variations in the metaphor (usually only need the happy and sad yellow). I also do two columns, one for schedule, one for progress. Would show it here, but this is text only…