Speaker Spotlight: Aaron Hursman (Effective Dashboard Design)

Aaron Hursman is a passionate user-advocate that is lucky enough to do what he loves for a living. As the lead User Experience Architect for Slalom Consulting in Dallas, he applies user-centered design principles and techniques for his clients to various enterprise solutions like Microsoft SharePoint, ASP.NET, and dashboard and business intelligence applications. Aaron has 12 years of consulting experience, has a background in web development and enterprise applications, and enjoys participating in the social web. Aaron holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management information systems from the University of Texas at Austin. He may be contacted at aaronh@slalom.com.

Session Talk: Effective Deshboard Design (Why Your Baby is Ugly)

As enterprises and other organizations look to sift through and make sense of the all the structured and unstructured data available to them, dashboards are being positioned as the solution to their problems. However, a dashboard needs special attention to the visual design or the dashboard will fail to meet expectations. If not carefully designed, a new dashboard can leave consumers unsatisfied, frustrated, confused, and even overwhelmed. Aaron Hursman will share his experiences designing effective dashboards that deliver on the promise of targeted, accessible, and actionable information. He will discuss examples from both his personal work and contributions of thought-leaders in this space. Through these examples, he will present practical dashboard design techniques. He will also present effective approaches to take during design and construction. Finally, Aaron will explain the challenges and obstacles that dashboard designers face today, and how to mitigate the risks that result.

Some Other Things About Aaron Hursman

Aaron gave this presentation to a room at SxSW, which was virtually full. We were impressed with how well that Aaron managed the back channel conversations on twitter. If you have a question, Aaron will answer it. He is smart, knowledgeable and loves to share his thoughts. Check it out.