Dashboard Design Principles

Storytelling Through Data

By Shivam Vora, BE-IT

 What is a Dashboard?

A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to

achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen
so the information can be monitored briefly.
Good Dashboards
Bad Dashboards
 Dashboard have 3 main attributes.. They

1 Typically, are graphical in nature, providing visualizations that help

focus attention on key trends, comparisons, and exceptions

2 Often display only data that are relevant to the goal of the
dashboard

3
Contain predefined conclusions that relieve the end user
from performing his own analysis (given that dashboards
are designed with a specific purpose or goal)
 Dashboard Design Principles

When it comes to best practices, there aren’t any hard and fast
rules, such as “do this and never do that.” It isn’t a black and
white process. There are, however, guidelines that make sense
most of the time. Many of these derive from studies done on
how we as humans process things like color, shape, and size.
When you really understand the concepts driving these
guidelines, only then should you break them.
 Dashboard Design Principles

1 Identify your goal

2 Select Relevant Metrics

3 Choose right visuals

4 Logical Layout 5 Simple and Consistent

Identify your goal

 Know your purpose and audience/consumer

 Know your dashboard type
• Strategic: executive, high-level
• Operational: immediate use, sales information, pulse
• Analytic: drill-down, highly interactive

 What value will the dashboard add?

Management strategic dashboard
This management dashboard below is one of
the best strategic dashboard examples that
could easily be displayed in a board meeting. It
isn’t cluttered, but it quickly tells a cohesive
data story. The dashboard focuses on revenue
in total as well as at the customer level plus the
cost of acquiring new customers. The
dashboard is set to a specific time frame, and it
includes significant KPIs: customer acquisition
costs, customer lifetime value, and sales target.
Marketing operational dashboard
The marketing performance dashboard above
is one of our top operational dashboard
examples. It shows the performance of 3
campaigns over the past 12 weeks. It provides
important operational information and key
performance indicators for the marketing team
on cost per acquisition, the total number of
clicks, total acquisitions gained, and the total
amount spent in the specific campaign.
Financial performance dashboard
In the example, the analysis of the financial
dashboard focused on performance can help
decision-makers to see how efficiently the
company’s capital is being spent and to
establish a specific operational task to structure
future decisions better..
Identify your goal
Does the dashboard...
• help management define what is important?
• educate people in the organization about the things that matter?
• set goals and expectations for specific individuals or groups?
• help executives sleep at night because they know what's going
on?
• encourage specific actions in a timely manner?
• highlight exceptions and provide alerts when problems occur?
• Communicate progress and success?
• provide a common interface for interacting with and analyzing
important business data?
Select Relevant Metrics
A Dashboard should display the metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which are most
relevant to the business and audience needs
Select Relevant Metrics

 For a truly effective KPI dashboard design, selecting the right key
performance indicators (KPIs) for your business needs is a must.
 Once you’ve determined your ultimate goals and considered your
target audience, you will be able to select the best KPIs to feature in
your dashboard.
 Your KPIs will help to shape the direction of your dashboards as these
metrics will display visual representations of relevant insights based
on specific areas of the business.
Choose Right Visuals
It is important to choose the right charts and visuals along with the right analysis. If the visuals
are not correct it is difficult to communicate the correct story.
Choose Right Visuals
Our brains process visual information faster and more efficiently than text. Our visual system has
been processing information long before language was ever developed.
Choose Right Visuals
 You can destroy all your efforts with a missing or incorrect chart type.
It’s important to understand what type of information you want to
convey and choose a data visualization that is suited to the task.
 Dashboard-centric charts and visualizations fall into four primary
categories that are related to the aim of the visualization: relationship,
distribution, composition, and comparison. It is important to
understand the aim of the metric before picking the chart type that
you want.
Choose Right Visuals

 Avoid pie charts

Much harder for humans to differentiate differences in circles than lines
Logical Layout
The placement of charts on a dashboard is very important. If your dashboard is visually organized,
users will easily find the information they need

 Filters at the top, so user knows when and how to

start interacting

 Most important information at the top and centered

 Starts with the highest level and works down to

more precise details

 No more than 4-5 worksheets

Logical Layout
This is a metaphor used by journalist to illustrate how
information should be prioritized and structured in text.
The widest part at the top represents the most
substantial, interesting, and important information that
the writer means to convey, illustrating that this kind of
material should head the article, while the tapering
lower portion illustrates that other material should
follow in order of diminishing importance.
This metaphor holds true for a dashboard – the most
important, newsworthy information should be at the top
and the importance of information should filter down.
Logical Layout
Dashboard best practices in design concern more than just good metrics and well-
thought-out charts. Poor layout forces users to think more before they grasp the
point, and nobody likes to look for data in a jungle of charts and numbers. The
general rule is that the key information should be displayed first – at the top of
the screen, upper left-hand corner. There is some scientific wisdom behind this
placement – most cultures read their written language from left to right and top to
bottom, which means that people intuitively look at the upper-left part of a page
first, no matter if you're developing an enterprise dashboard design or a smaller-
scaled within the department - the rule is the same.
Simple and Consistent
Keep It Clean
Avoid the fancy formatting

 Avoid using colors or background fills to partition your dashboards.

 De-emphasize borders, backgrounds, and other elements that define
dashboard areas.
 Avoid applying fancy effects such as gradients, pattern fills, shadows, glows,
soft edges, and other formatting.
 Don't try to enhance your dashboards with clip art or pictures.
Simple and Consistent
Format Numbers Effectively
Show this, Not that

 Always use commas to make numbers easier to read.

SHOW THIS: 2,345 NOT THAT: 2345
 Only use decimal places if that level of precision is required; there’s rarely a benefit for
showing the decimal places in a dollar amount.
SHOW THIS: $123 NOT THAT: $123.45
 Likewise in percentages, use only the minimum number of decimals.
SHOW THIS: 43% NOT THAT: 43.21%
 Format very large numbers to the thousands or millions place.
SHOW THIS: 17M NOT THAT: 16,906,714
Simple and Consistent
Use Titles

 A concise, descriptive title can make a huge

difference in garnering attention and making a
chart more memorable
 Always include some text indicating when the
data for the measures was retrieved.
 Use descriptive titles for each component on E.g., Iraq’s bloody toll –this dashboard
was published in South China’s Morning
your dashboard. Post by Simon Scar– the word choice in
the title is matched by the attention
capturing bar chart – yes this is just an
inverted bar chart made to look like blood.
Simple and Consistent
Be Careful Not To Become The Next Vincent van Gogh

Everyone loves colorful art… just not in a report.

Color should be used to highlight key data indicators and allow easier definition of the
overall data story.
Simple and Consistent
Use Colors Effectively

 Use contrasting colors for background and texts.

 Restrict yourself to few colors.
 The font size should be at least 12
 Keep the color selection consistent across all charts. This eliminates confusion
and establishes identity.
 'HOT' colors, like RED, are attention grabbers. They carry heavy visual weight and
will draw the eye of the reader. Save them for elements truly deserving of your
reader's attention.
Simple and Consistent
Use Colors Effectively
Simple and Consistent
Limit to 7 or less colors
Simple and Consistent
Use Colors Effectively

DONT BE AFRAID...
WHITE SPACE
Simple and Consistent
Whitespace

 Avoid unnecessary text/graphics to fill the "white space".

 Do not consider "white space" as blank space.
 Users aren’t typically aware of the pivotal role that space plays in visual
composition, but designers pay a great deal of attention to it because when
metrics, stats, and insights are unbalanced, they are difficult to digest. You should
always double the margins surrounding the main elements of your dashboard to
ensure each is framed with a balanced area of white space, making the
information easier to absorb.
 Dashboard Checklist
1. What questions are you trying to answer?
 Does this visualization answer all your questions?
 Is the purpose of the visualization clearly explained in its title or surrounding
text?
 Can you understand the visualization in 30 seconds or less, without
additional information?
 Does your visualization include a title? Is that title simple, informative, and
eye-catching?
 Does your visualization include subtitles to guide your viewers?.
 Dashboard Checklist

2. Do you have the right chart type for your analysis?

 What types of analysis are you performing?
 Have you selected the most suitable chart type(s) for your types of
analysis?
 Have you considered alternative chart types that could work better
than the ones you have chosen?
 Dashboard Checklist
3. Are your views effective?
 Are your most important data shown on the X- and Y-axes and your less
important data encoded in color or shape attributes?
 Are your views oriented intuitively-do they cater to the way your viewers read
and perceive data?
 Have you limited the number of measures or dimensions in a single view so
that your users can see your data?
 Have you limited your usage of colors and shapes so that your users can
distinguish them and see patterns?
 Dashboard Checklist
5. Did you perfect your work?
 Do all the colors on your dashboard go together without clashing?
 Do you have less than 7-10 colors on your dashboards?
 Do you use fonts consistently in all of your views and no more than three
different fonts on one dashboard?
 Are you labels clear and concise? Are they placed optimally to help guide
your viewers? Make sure subtitles are formatted to be subordinate to the
main title.
 Are your tooltips informative?
 Key Takeaways For Successful Dashboard Designs
 Every dashboard you create should exist for a focused user group with the
specific aim of helping users tap into business decision-making processes
and transform digital insights into positive strategic actions.

 Information is only valuable when it is directly actionable. Based on this

principle, it’s critical that the end-user can employ the information served up
by a dashboard to enhance their personal goals, roles, and activities within
the business.

 By only using the best and most balanced dashboard design principles, you’ll
ensure that everyone within your organization can identify key information
with ease, which will accelerate the growth, development, and evolution of
your business.
 To Summarize
 Consider your audience
 Choose relevant KPIs
 Don't try to place all the information on the same page
 Use the right chart type
 Choose your layout carefully
 Prioritize simplicity
 Round your numbers
 Be careful with colors
 Be consistent with labeling and formatting