Functional and Non-Functional Requirements: Building a Dashboard that Works for Your Needs
In our previous installment of the “Dashboards Demystified” series, we discussed the initial steps in crafting an effective dashboard – identifying the core problem, setting objectives and key results (OKRs), and defining key performance indicators (KPIs). With those foundational elements in place, it’s time to dive deeper into the design process and uncover the specific requirements that will shape your dashboard’s functionality and user experience.
As an experienced IT professional, you know that gathering comprehensive requirements is crucial for delivering a solution that truly meets the needs of your stakeholders. In the context of a clinical dashboard, this process involves a detailed needs assessment with the intended users – from frontline staff to managers and executives. By understanding their current workflows and pain points, you can ensure the dashboard integrates seamlessly and provides the necessary insights to drive improved patient outcomes.
Functional Requirements: Defining the “Must-Haves”
Functional requirements are the specific capabilities or features that your dashboard must possess. These are the “need to haves” that directly address the core problem and enable your users to accomplish their tasks more effectively. Common functional requirements for clinical dashboards may include:
- Measurement of KPIs: The ability to track and display the key performance indicators you’ve identified, providing real-time or near real-time data.
- Alert Creation: Mechanisms to notify users when critical thresholds are exceeded, such as capacity limits or wait times beyond acceptable standards.
- Customization: Options for users to personalize the dashboard layout, KPI selection, and data visualization preferences.
- Tracking: Features that allow users to monitor trends and changes in KPIs over time, supporting data-driven decision-making.
By thoroughly documenting these functional requirements, you can ensure your dashboard development team has a clear understanding of the essential features that must be delivered.
Non-Functional Requirements: Defining the “Nice-to-Haves”
While functional requirements focus on what the dashboard must do, non-functional requirements address the overall quality and performance of the system. These “nice to haves” may include:
- Speed: Ensuring the dashboard loads and updates within a specified timeframe (e.g., under 5 seconds) to maintain user engagement and productivity.
- Security: Implementing appropriate access controls, data encryption, and user authentication to protect sensitive patient information.
- Scalability: Designing the dashboard to support a growing number of concurrent users without compromising performance.
- Ease of Use: Optimizing the user interface and navigation to minimize cognitive load and streamline workflow integration.
- Mobile Compatibility: Ensuring the dashboard can be accessed and utilized effectively on various mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.
By considering these non-functional requirements, you can create a dashboard that not only delivers the necessary functionality but also provides an exceptional user experience and meets organizational security and performance standards.
Gathering Requirements: Leveraging User Feedback
Gathering both functional and non-functional requirements involves a collaborative process with your intended users. Surveys, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups are all effective methods to uncover their needs, pain points, and expectations.
While surveys may be the easiest to conduct logistically, the discussions fostered by interviews and focus groups can help users uncover and challenge assumptions that may ultimately impact the dashboard’s usability and adoption. A helpful activity to consider in a focus group is card sorting, where users create and organize functional and non-functional requirements. This exercise can guide users in prioritizing dashboard features, which can be tracked in a priority matrix (e.g., a 2×2 grid of usefulness and feasibility) or through simple up-and-down voting.
Tools like Miro can facilitate these virtual focus group activities, allowing your team to collaborate and synthesize user feedback in real-time. By actively engaging your stakeholders throughout the requirements-gathering process, you can ensure your dashboard design aligns with their needs and workflows, ultimately driving increased user adoption and the desired impact.
Designing for Optimal Impact: Five Key Principles
With a solid understanding of your functional and non-functional requirements, it’s time to translate that into an intuitive and impactful dashboard design. Here are five key principles to keep in mind:
-
Audience-Specific Perspectives: Dashboards are often categorized into operational, tactical, and strategic types, each catering to different user needs and decision-making time horizons. Carefully consider how to customize the KPI presentation and aggregation to best serve your target audience.
-
Intuitive Information Hierarchy: Organize your dashboard like an “inverted pyramid,” with the most critical KPIs and alerts placed in the upper-left corner to immediately capture the user’s attention. Gradually add supporting metrics and contextual information in a structured layout to minimize cognitive load.
-
Effective Data Visualization: Leverage the five main types of visual elements – relationships, comparisons, compositions, distributions, and status indicators – to convey KPIs in the most impactful and easily digestible manner. Carefully consider the appropriate level of granularity and temporal data representation to support user decision-making.
-
Aesthetics and Accessibility: Optimize your dashboard’s visual design with principles of color theory, white space, and concise labeling to enhance legibility and clarity. Ensure your color schemes and design choices adhere to accessibility standards, catering to users with various abilities and disabilities.
-
Balanced Alerting: Strike the right balance with your alert system, creating notifications only for the most critical events to avoid “alarm fatigue.” Time these alerts based on quality and patient safety standards, and provide clear workflows for users to act upon them.
By adhering to these design principles, you can create a dashboard that not only meets the functional and non-functional requirements but also delivers an intuitive, visually compelling, and impactful experience for your users.
Prototyping and Iterative Refinement
With the requirements gathering and design principles in place, it’s time to start prototyping your dashboard. Engage your stakeholders throughout this process, leveraging activities like card sorting and feedback sessions to refine the design and ensure it aligns with their needs.
As you build the initial prototype, consider using tools like Miro or Figma to create a interactive, clickable mockup. This will allow your users to experience the dashboard in a more tangible way, providing valuable insights and suggestions for improvement.
Embrace an iterative approach, continuously gathering feedback and incorporating it into subsequent design iterations. This collaborative process will not only result in a more user-centric dashboard but also foster a sense of ownership and investment among your stakeholders, further driving adoption and engagement.
Remember, the development of an effective dashboard is an ongoing journey. As your organization’s needs and priorities evolve, be prepared to revisit the requirements, design, and implementation to ensure your dashboard remains a valuable tool in supporting data-driven decision-making and improved patient outcomes.
Stay tuned for the next installment of our “Dashboards Demystified” series, where we’ll dive into the technical implementation and deployment of your dashboard solution. In the meantime, you can visit https://itfix.org.uk/ to explore more IT-related articles and resources.
