Thinking / Data

Define the event before the dashboard

Useful reporting starts with a shared definition of what happened. Event schemas and their documentation belong in the platform design.

In the Web 2 analytics and eventing work for P&O Cruises and Cunard, I designed a single source of truth for event schemas and version-controlled documentation. The work supported sites in Great Britain, Germany, the United States and Australia, making shared definitions a practical delivery concern.

My starting questions are simple: what happened, what does the event mean, and who will use it? Define those before designing the dashboard. Keep the schema and documentation alongside implementation so the meaning of the data can be reviewed when the platform changes.

Context

Web 2 analytics and eventing

Question

Do we agree on what this event means?