Determining Infolet Content

Consider the following general tips when determining infolet content:

Look to existing dashboards and work area pages.

Dashboards and work area pages are excellent starting points because they display collections of information summaries.
Apply the 10/90/90 principle.

Seek out the most essential, easily consumable information that addresses frequently asked questions garnered from the top 10 percent of use cases. These use cases can come from across your enterprise—from business intelligence, social, transactional, external, and so on.

Then focus this information to reveal what 90 percent of your users would benefit from viewing 90 percent of the time. You can apply this 10/90/90 percent principle to existing dashboard content, to existing work area page content, or generally, to percolate eligible information for an infolet.
Restate your top use cases in the form of frequently asked business questions.

Present the corresponding infolet content in such a way as to answer these business questions; for example, how many orders are in jeopardy, listed by status?
Look for one point or a tightly related, interdependent set of points, instead of multiple points of information.

The process of determining content for an infolet is similar to the process that is used to yield dashboard content—but to a deeper level of analysis. Look for information within a data point or data set that is suitable to be displayed in no more than three views of information hierarchy and that answers a critical business question.
Start with the single most important point.

An infolet displays aggregated information about a single data aspect or point of information in relation to an event that the user needs to know about or a task that the user needs to address.

If a dashboard contains multiple aspects about one or more objects (for example, numeric totals and currency totals), start with the single most important point and add that as a simple overview (for example, as a total using a stylized numeric value) to the front view of an infolet. Then determine the content for the back view, if needed. Finally, determine the content for the expanded view, if needed.

An infolet should have no more than three views. If there is only a single data point or only one tightly related, interdependent data set to display on an infolet, use only the front view.