Defuse the tension between designers and technologists – educate on your BI tools capabilities upfront

When working with designers, or users who are interested in designing their dashboards, you will undoubtedly run into tensions between what “should be” and what “can be”. While you can argue that with software there are really no limitations, and any requirements can be met given unlimited time and money, none of our projects enjoy that kind of a situation. We are always working within the constraints of time, budget, resources, etc, and the designs are bound to the possibilities of the technology that is being used. Your users and designers may want to incorporate charts that are not available in the technology of choice, develop complex navigational schemes that cannot be met, or want a very particular interaction driven by a certain type of fly-out, swirly, fade-in, color changing menu that you simply cannot produce.
If you are using Xcelsius as your dashboard technology, you can use the following file as a way to help mitigate this tension. This file lays out all the key components of Xcelsius, all the chart types, selectors gauges and sliders, and some of the other components, in a way that can be articulated and demonstrated to designers and business users. While each components, and certainly combinations of components are highly configurable through their properties sheets, in general, this type of an “upfront review” will give your users and designers a good understating of the capabilities of the tool and help set the stage for a productive collaboration around the tool capabilities.