Google Map as Dashboard

Traveling in car to work in the early hours of the day to beat traffic. Worried about the traffic so much so that I skip bath, dress up, breakfast and get it all done after I reach office. Every additional minute’s delay in the start time leads to 5–10 additional minutes in the car as traffic rises mirroring the sunrise.

Google Maps is my go-to tool to navigate under this high pressure time.

It provides many utilities in addition to navigation. Most useful among them — Destination Arrival Time.

What is the current time?

What is the speed of the vehicle?

What is the distance left to be covered?

How does the traffic ahead look?

It bundles up all the above to arrive at a number that determines whether I solve the problem at hand — in this case, reaching office on time.

If not for this leading indicator, I’d be investing precious mind compute to predict the arrival time while driving.

How I wish data dashboards were that simple? Just one data point to zero in on.

Not multitude of visuals answering one-off cases — what if the tyres wear out? what if the ride is upgraded? Nor plain SUMIF aggregations that don’t address the problem at hand readily.

Just one leading indicator that does all the grunt work and lets me know if I’m on time.

Orginally published on LinkedIn