Over the past five years, the amount of data we produce daily has increased dramatically. We create about 2.5 million bytes of data worldwide per day and the volume and complexity of the data grows exponentially every year. The rapidly evolving production of information makes it challenging to manage infrastructures struggling to keep up with the size.
Data is how we make sense of the world around us. We draw meaning, find patterns, and make associations based on our previous experiences. However, it takes an immense amount of human effort to sort through large volumes of complex data. We need to be able to visualize data in a digestible and compelling way without making it too simplistic.
When working with millions of data points, we need to have an effective way to visualize what our business data is trying to communicate. Research shows the human brain processes visual inputs 60k times faster than text. The ability to process and exhibit even the most complex data in an efficient way is invaluable insight to a business’ ongoings.
At RapDev, we use Datadog’s Dashboards to make sense of large fleets, tracking various cloud service usage and ensuring the uptime of your apps across all regions. Dashboards help you analyze, compile and display data in a quick, easy-to-scan format with the most relevant information that is understandable at a glance on one single screen.
Creating compelling and advantageous dashboards is both an art and a technical science. If you have an excellent way of collecting data but with no impressionable way to present it to stakeholders, then it's likely to not get the expected business outcome. We should strive for valuable data visualizations by making them strategically to display insights quickly and efficiently for end-users.This is the primary indication of orphaned records. An orphaned record will be visible in the list view but will be unable to be opened or selected in a reference field.
The lack of clear actionable data in a dashboard can be misleading. Even though we see some critical information about the above integration health and status, it might be better to add context to it with an overview and about section, notes or any relevant information that can help end-users make sense of the data they are presented with.
A good visualization should display data in an easy-to-scan format: This integration dashboard offers symmetry, concise descriptions and a well-formatted walk-through of its key performance metrics.
Here, I’ve categorized several tricks I’ve used when creating dashboards:
At Rapdev, we use dashboards every day to analyze, monitor and troubleshoot business infrastructure. They provide a great way to stay on the same page with our teams and make data-driven decisions! Stay tuned for a follow up for this blog post, where we do a technical deep dive into how to build compelling dashboards.
If you are interested in implementing Datadog, reach out to us at chat@rapedv.io
Anaflor Pernalete
Boston
Data enthusiast born and raised in the Caribbean. She has experience in data analytics and statistics and loves creating art and illustrations.