One of the most difficult aspects of creating our cost models can be the design of the outputs and the user interface. What to display on the outputs, how to display it, and how the user affects these outputs can make or break the effectiveness of your cost model. It is easy to make these processes more complicated than is necessary. This can add confusion and diminish the effectiveness of the tool.
What to display on the outputs is sometimes very challenging for me. These models are typically very ‘deep,’ meaning there are many inputs and outputs (both final and intermediate). The display of the outputs will typically take the form of some sort of dashboard or graphical display. If you put too much in this the important ‘decision making’ information may get lost or overwhelmed by less important data points. On the contrary, not displaying the right information will make the tool useless for certain considerations that the client is interested in. By far, the best way to overcome this is to go back to the Voice of the Customer. This can either be done through some previous documentation; or, better yet, initiate a dialogue with the customer (hopefully you they have been engaged throughout the process). Concentrate on what they want to use the tool for. All of the displayed outputs should help drive these decisions, show the problem from a different angle, or demonstrate the impacts of a decisions.
How the outputs are displayed can also muddy the waters of decision making. The flow and placement of the information should follow some sort of natural logic. This flow could be from the macro-level outputs to the individual details, or it could help tell the story of the problem. No matter how you choose to arrange the outputs, you want it be easy to pick out important data points and, ultimately, make the right decisions. Another consideration is that we, as humans, aren’t normally prone to looking at large data matrices and immediately pulling out the ‘so what.’ Not that the ‘bottom line’ values shouldn’t be displayed, but consider using the rich graphical outputs that we have at our disposal: bar charts, pie charts, line graphs, ‘waterfall’ graphs, etc. There are many books and articles on what type of display device to use for certain types of information. If you are having trouble deciding, don’t hesitate to utilize all of the resources at your disposal.
How the user interacts with the model should be as simple as possible. The client may dictate what inputs they wish to manipulate. In conjunction with this, you can also give the user the ability to manipulate the ‘driver’ variables, the 20% that give ‘sway’ the outputs the most. Avoid overwhelming the user with too many options. Try to limit the number to the top five or six that have the greatest impact on the decisions to be made. Also, use visual management to clearly mark where the inputs are and what is expected of the user. Buttons, sliders, and dials will tend to bring out the natural instinct to ‘fiddle’ with the tool.
Complexities in cost modeling outputs can be reduced by:
- Using the ‘Voice of the Customer’ to dictate what the output should be
- Not putting extraneous outputs into the dashboard/interface
- Ensuring that the outputs drive decision making, add insight to the problem, or demonstrate the impacts of decisions.
Simplify the display of the outputs, while increasing usability by:
- Organizing the placement of the outputs to create a logic flow to follow
- Ensuring that data can be easily identified and ‘pick out’ for decision making
- Using graphs, where appropriate, to turn numbers into visual displays
- Making sure that the ‘bottom line’ is easy to identify
Increase usability and decrease complexity of the model’s usage by:
- Minimizing the user inputs to only those critical to decision making or the variables that have the greatest impact on your model
- Utilizing ‘Visual Management’ to let the user know what is expected of them
- Using buttons, sliders, and dials to encourage the user to ‘play’ with the model
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