With the introduction of Windows 8 Microsoft relies on the tiles concept for structured visualization of programs, apps and information on the home screen. Even SAP has taken up this idea, and with SAP Fiori, they have created a simple user interface that is build on this tile concept - adapted to the needs of operational business applications.
It was therefore obvious for us to develop a tile solution for Business Intelligence (BI) – the more so as our customers have signalled a demand. They wanted a start screen for dashboards that clearly represents the key performance indicators (KPIs).
From this highly aggregated view the user should jump – in terms of a pre-defined navigation path – on graphical overviews or detailed table views created with our graphomate charts and graphomate tables – see Figure below – from starting point to detail
After a first gathering of the customer requirements pertaining to a tile solution it was obvious that there is no single tile that can be used for all purposes: too different were the demands on the visual requirements. The solution had to be a modular construction kit, which allows users to combine different tile modules on a pre-defined layout.
The question remained how to create a uniform design of these modules and the whole tile. Here we were able to draw on the great work of John Armitage: his design proposals for analytical tiles were our aesthetic standard for a consistent style. For further reading take a look at his book “Bringing Numbers to Life: Lava and Design-Led Innovation in Visual Analytics”.