After the confusion over Google's coronavirus site, Microsoft has jumped in with a whole new dashboard to monitor covid-19 infections throughout the entire world, down to your state and community. [It's called the Bing Covid-19 Tracker, and while it's a good first effort, it definitely needs to be improved.

The user experience of Bing Covid-19 Tracker is very good. The clean interface first displays the global infection status, with a red circular area centered on each country or, in the case of the U.S., each state. This area grows in size according to the number of infected people in that zone.

On the side, there are columns showing numbers of active, fatal, and recovered cases of infection, as well as a list of countries that can be drilled down to a world map.

The UX is fluid and adapts to any screen size or device, as shown below.

Unfortunately, however, the user experience does not match the information presented by the tool.

First and foremost, the tracker lacks granularity in many aspects. While it is good to know how many cases are in a country or state, people would be more interested in knowing how many cases are in their area. All countries except the US are represented as one whole, but that does not paint a useful picture about the people living in those countries. I am now in Madrid, where everything is on lockdown, and I cannot see any information about the region, let alone about the city or each barrio.

Only in the US can you drill down by state, but that doesn't help much either because most states are huge. People may want to know information specific to the area where they live or where their loved ones live.

Other lack of granularity comes from the news and videos presented by the tool. These will vary depending on the country selected, but will not vary from state to state. In addition, there is no way to select a specific county, city, or district, so one cannot get up-to-date information on the area closest to them.

For this type of site to be truly useful, Microsoft, Google, and everyone else should flex their search and AI muscles and create a truly useful dashboard that not only shows what is happening in the world and the country, but actually helps individuals.

Perhaps as the crisis develops, we will see these companies actually add more power to these tools, but for now, it all seems very tenuous. And as someone who lives in Spain, I am running out of time to develop the information to actually help individuals and communities as they do in Korea. [21] [22] While we wait for more information surrounding COVID-19, we recommend following the coronavirus tips for keeping your distance and staying safe, practicing social distancing and avoiding going out unless absolutely necessary.