anIDEA

Building a Better Heads-Up Display (HUD)

Seemingly-Mundane Information Made Useful

One of the trends that I’ve noticed during my time at AgencyNet is that when we have a few projects kicking off around the same time, a majority of our employees are in meetings at the same time, leaving a number of desks empty throughout the day.

In writing this post, I designed a sample visualization that’s intended to be projected on the walls of our office, viewable to anyone inside it – creating a change in behavior or focus for any viewer. During my take-back presentation to the office, I projected a similar HUD to show employees how we could utilize this type of information.

Let’s dig a little further into the above image…

To determine the “People in Meetings vs. People at Their Desks”, a background process monitors their instant messenger statuses (…creating instant controversy, I might add). Those who are idle are simply assumed to either be in meetings, at lunch, or taking a quick coffee break. Those who aren’t idle are most likely at their desks.  The methodology isn’t perfect, however; there’s a small percentage of error due to IM clients that don’t report idle times or people who are “busy doing research.”

Next, since I’m on the first floor of the office, I can personally count the amount of people who go to the local coffee shop (but only when they go in groups — it’s hard to count individual trips). Next, since a few employees regularly stock refrigerators with soda for other employees, I also track the amount of sodas removed (taking the replenished amounts into consideration) each day.

I can also tap into our server to see the current number of active web sessions that indicates how many users are on our AgencyNet.com and ANidea.com sites at any given time.

Using our internal Last.fm user group, we can easily display the current week’s Top 5 song list. I’ll also count the number of dogs we have in our office just for fun.

Not only does visualizing this information create friendly competition between the meeting-vs.-desk and soda-vs.-coffee people, but it also helps us respond to trends in office activity. If the number of “coffee people” significantly outnumber the “soda people,” perhaps we need to buy a better coffee maker.

Where Are We Now?

For brand managers, a HUD could be developed that displays how many users are accessing a specific feature of their site and compare it to the other sections – this would give the web team an idea of site performance as the day progresses. If the site in this scenario is a content-based site where updates are published throughout the day, then the areas that should be focused on would be easily identified.  Content launch timing could be similarly optimized.

Take a cue from the stock brokers on the NYSE floor: Not only are they surrounded with wall-to-wall tickers scrolling the latest updates, but they are often standing at workstations that surround them with 3 or more displays containing specific information that’s most important to them and their clients. Having that information in an always-on/always-available state allows them to make instant decisions based on real-time market activity.

Solid data, a designer, and a well-developed HUD can make the difference between delayed reactions and expedited, informed decisions. How do you make effective use of your data? Tell us in the comments!

Follow the author: @chrisfullman Follow AgencyNet: @agencynet

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