How can you design a financial dashboard that is both functional and visually appealing?

1 Know your audience

The first step in designing a financial dashboard is to understand who will use it and what they need to know. Different audiences may have different expectations, preferences, and levels of familiarity with financial data. For example, a dashboard for executives may focus on high-level strategic goals and metrics, while a dashboard for managers may include more details and drill-down options. You should also consider how your audience will access and interact with your dashboard, whether it is on a desktop, a mobile device, or a printed report.

2 Choose your KPIs

The next step is to select the most relevant and meaningful KPIs for your dashboard. KPIs are the metrics that reflect your performance against your objectives and help you evaluate your success. You should choose KPIs that are aligned with your strategy, actionable, measurable, and timely. You should also limit the number of KPIs to avoid clutter and confusion. A good rule of thumb is to have no more than 10 KPIs per dashboard, and preferably less.

3 Select your visuals

The third step is to choose the best visual elements to display your KPIs. Visuals can help you convey your message more effectively and engage your audience more emotionally. However, not all visuals are created equal. You should select visuals that are appropriate for your data type, scale, and comparison. For example, you can use bar charts, line charts, or area charts to show trends over time, pie charts or donut charts to show proportions or percentages, and gauges or indicators to show progress or status.

4 Apply design principles

The fourth step is to apply some basic design principles to your dashboard to make it more attractive and readable. Balance, contrast, alignment, repetition, proximity, and simplicity are all important design principles that can help you organize your layout and create harmony, emphasis, consistency, unity, relationships, and clarity. Symmetrical or asymmetrical arrangements can be used to create stability. Different sizes, shapes, colors or values can be used to create distinction. Grids, guides or margins can be used to align elements and create order. Similar or identical elements can be used to create cohesion. Spacing and grouping can be used to show relationships and hierarchy. Finally, minimal and clear elements should be used to avoid distraction and noise.

5 Test and refine

The final step is to test and refine your dashboard to ensure that it meets your objectives and satisfies your audience. You can do this by asking yourself or others questions such as if the dashboard answers the key questions, highlights the most important information and insights, uses the most suitable and accurate data sources and calculations, has a logical and intuitive structure and navigation, has a consistent and appealing look and feel, and loads and updates quickly and smoothly. Based on the feedback and results, you can make adjustments and improvements to your dashboard until you are content with the outcome.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?