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March/April 1997 Volume 9 Number 1
Court Manager's Information Display System
Imagine, for the moment, that you are driving in your automobile. You need to know how fast you're going so that you can get to your destination as quickly as possible while observing the posted limits. But you have no instrument panel on your dashboard! Instead, you turn to a stack of printed reports on the seat beside you, select one, and read through it until you come to a figure indicating your current speed. Then you riffle through several more pages to find the number of miles you have driven since your last stop. Now you start worrying about how much gas you have left. Unfortunately, without a simple fuel gauge you must look for another report containing the number of gallons left in your tank (also expressed, of course, as a percentage of the number of gallons your tank will hold). Is the engine running too hot?... Ah, page 14 of this report says "Water Temperature: 195 degrees Fahrenheit." Hmm,...wonder what the acceptable range is?...flip, flip, flip...Oil pressure?...Without those nifty gauges and warning lights, it's a full-time job just to monitor the status of the automobile, let alone to steer it to your destination!
Perhaps the analogy is a bit far-fetched, but court administrators and administrative judges experience many of the same frustrations and limitations in trying to monitor the status of court operations on the basis of traditional printed reports. Wouldn't it be great if they too could have a system of visual indicators similar to an instrument panel to help them quickly assess the status of their courts?
With funding from the State Justice Institute, the National Center for State Courts has developed a conceptual design for a Court Manager's Information Display System (CMIDS). Its goal is to stimulate thinking about how management information may be viewed and to provide a foundation for a graphical "front end," or user interface, between court managers and the court's case management database. The concept has been embodied in a mock-up system that simulates the appearance and operation of a real system so that court managers and technologists can visualize how such a system might be developed in their own courts.
The CMIDS mock-up employs a variety of color-coded lights and analog gauges designed to convey information quickly and intuitively. The conceptual design is based on the idea of combining detailed caseload and caseflow measurements into a set of progressively higher-level, composite indicators. Ultimately, the universe of individual measures is reduced to a single, colored light that can be displayed on the manager's PC to indicate the overall status of court operations.
If this top-level light were green, for example, a harried manager would be able to turn to more pressing matters, secure in the knowledge that all the measured areas of the court were operating within the prescribed parameters. If the light were yellow or red, however, the manager may decide to "drill down" to more detailed information in order to identify the area that needs attention. Using the PC's mouse, the manager can "click" on the light (which is really a lighted, three-dimensional push-button graphic) to have the system display the next level of indicators broken down by category of measurement or by court division. Guided by what these summary indicators show, the manager can continue pushing buttons to trace the bottleneck or problem area into deeper levels of detail.
Visual displays that take advantage of color and relative position can convey information far more quickly and effectively than character-oriented reports that of raw numbers or compare one number with require the reader to interpret the significance one or more other numbers. For example, to portray aggregate case times, the CMIDS mock-up uses an analog disposition gauge with a rotating needle red ranges. This kind of display makes it and a numbered dial marked with green, yellow, and easy to see at a glance not only the value of a given measure, but value falls in the range of possible values and also where that how it relates to the contains several types of instruments and other standards set by the court for that measure. The mock-up visual displays, each designed for the particular type of presented.aggregate data being
The mock-up system will be available in April 1997. It will be distributed on floppy disk for installation and viewing on any PC running Microsoft Windows version 3.1 or higher. In addition, it will be accessible through NCSC’s Web site on the Internet. While the CMIDS simulation is not guaranteed to be as exciting as a flight simulator or a simulated race in a Ferrari, it will help court managers and technologists envision a better alternative to traditional printed reports and numerical displays.
Limited free copies of the CMIDS Mock-Up will be available in April 1997. To reserve your copy, contact Technology Services at (888) 846-6746.
J. Douglas Walker is the director of Court Technology Research at the National Center for State Courts. Doug directed the Court Manager’s Information Display System project. He can be reached at (888) 846-6746.
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