Graham Randall of Duxford Aviation Society on using dashboards to provide insights into your collections data.
Duxford Aviation Society in Cambridgeshire manages the British Airliner Collection with Concorde and other iconic passenger aircraft in a unique and unparalleled collection. Alongside thirteen aircraft there is an expanding archive of technical documents, images and publications linked to each.
But how can you show the full scope and scale of your collection data in one page? How can you summarise the data in a way that offers clarity and provides insights?
Over the past few months, the team has been developing high-level dashboards to show the scale and scope of the collection as recorded in a Modes CMS database. “Seeing the full picture” means turning raw text and numbers into a compelling narrative using analysis and charts to reveal insights, support discussion, and drive action. Dashboards can provide this full picture, setting out where you are, why it matters, and what to do next.
Steve Radford, Collections Director, says “Dashboards have made the collection more manageable and more accessible for our Board. They are easy to use, and very little training is required because it is so user intuitive.”
The technical bit
The British Airliner Collection is recorded within Modes Complete which is a well-supported and extensive Collections Management System (CMS). The relevant data is exported in csv format. Microsoft Power Business Intelligence (Power BI) imports, combines and transforms this data. Refreshing the raw data from Modes can be done at any time.
Summary page
The summary page is the top-level starting point to see the full picture.
The visual elements used in a dashboard (in this case bar charts, a pie-chart and metrics) can be selected from an extensive palette. Pie-charts need to be used carefully as, with many slices, the visual can be somewhat difficult to read and decipher. Buttons can be added to the page and configured to filter the data displayed. For instance, if there were several discrete locations, then buttons can be added to let the user choose which location should be presented.
Interactive analysis
The visual elements in the dashboards are interactive and clicking on a specific bar will update all the associated values in the dashboard.
Our experience is that this ability to drill down sparks a conversation around the results. Are these results expected and acceptable? Should this issue be reviewed as part of the Collections Development Plan? The data is clear and presented in a way that was never obvious before the introduction of dashboards.
Metrics
The key metrics panel was developed to reflect progress against the museum’s priorities with the additional requirement that the metrics should be easily understood across the organisation. At the bottom of the panel the date shows when the CMS dataset was exported to ensure the latest position is being reflected in the charts. It was felt that the number of records stored in the CMS was not a key metric given that the quantity field would indicate where multiple items were involved – so the total number of accessioned objects was preferred in this panel. The number of objects on display to the public can increase or decrease as exhibitions are changed to tell a new story or commemorate a specific event.
The metric for Objects Loaned keeps a focus on object movements between organisations or individuals and can prompt discussions around loan periods and what conditions are attached to any loan.
Some view of the backlog was requested, and it was decided to use a proxy measure shown as “Added this year.” If the backlog is estimated to be around 500 items, and in a year only 10 are added, the outlook is bleak and more action is called for!
Detailed pages
The top-level summary page has been backed up by a small number of detailed pages where individual records from the CMS can be displayed. A format has been designed to provide a table layout with a RAG (Red, Amber, Green) banner at the top together with the count of objects listed.
The set of pages now includes a view of Inventory, Locations, Acquisitions and a “Watch page” where the team are monitoring certain parts of the collection. The overall data quality has improved as a result of this work.
AI enabled questions
Power BI includes “AI-powered questions” so you can ask a question in plain language and Power BI figures out what you mean.
For example, if someone wishes to know what is on display in one area of the museum, you might type in “List the items in Room 14”. This can be extended to select which fields in the record are needed by a fuller request such as “List the items in Room 14 in a table with the object title”.
Using natural language, you can ask to see the results as charts or tables and if the query is worth keeping for repeated use, it can be saved as an action button on the screen.
Hallucination (where AI invents an erroneous but plausible answer) is not an issue as the data being interrogated is only the data that has been exported from your CMS.
Conclusion
With the new visualisation tools now available, collections data has come in from the cold. Visual charts and graphs within dashboards convey complex issues quickly so that everyone can readily see and understand the full picture. We believe that any collection, no matter how big or small, can benefit from this approach.
For more information, contact Graham Randall ([email protected]).