Power BI: Highlighting Selected Items

Highlighting specific items in Power BI is a powerful way to enhance data analysis, especially when comparing these items against others to understand their relative position or performance. By bringing attention to a particular data point, we can quickly and effectively communicate key insights to the user, helping them see where they stand in a broader context.

The Power of Preattentive Processing

Preattentive processing is a concept in data visualization that leverages our innate ability to quickly focus on visual elements that stand out due to attributes like color, size, or shape. By using these visual cues, we can direct the viewer's attention to critical data points without requiring conscious effort. This process plays a crucial role in highlighting selected items in Power BI, making it easier for users to grasp complex information at a glance.

Why Highlighting Matters

Highlighting is not just about making certain data stand out; it's about telling a story. By guiding the user's attention to the most critical data points, we enable faster, more accurate decision-making. Whether it’s through adjusting size, color, or utilizing interactivity, these techniques empower analysts to present data in a way that is both visually engaging and insightful.

In Power BI, leveraging preattentive processes to highlight selected items enhances the user experience and provides deeper analytical insights, helping businesses make data-driven decisions with confidence.

Let’s say you have a scatter plot in Power BI where each dot represents a city, showing the employee count on x-axis and the average age of employees on the y-axis.

To highlight a specific city without filtering out the other cities in your scatter plot, start by creating a disconnected table of cities. This way, the city selection won't affect the data in the fact table (Employee_Data), allowing you to maintain the overall context of the chart.

To emphasize the selected city visually, you can create the following measure to dynamically change its color:

Selected | Color = 
    IF(
        SELECTEDVALUE(City[City]) = SELECTEDVALUE('Employee_Data'[location_city]),
        "Maroon",
        "Grey"
    )        

Steps to Implement:

1. Create the Measure
2. Then we go to Visual Settings > Marker > Color > Conditional Formatting
3. Select Format Style
4. Select the Measure created

This will change the color of the selected city to "Maroon," while all other cities will appear in "Grey," effectively drawing attention to the highlighted city without losing the context of the overall data.

To further enhance the highlighting effect, you can also adjust the size of the selected city in the scatter plot. This can be achieved using a measure that differentiates the selected city from the others.

Here’s how you can create the measure:

Selected | Size = 
    IF(
        SELECTEDVALUE(City[City]) = SELECTEDVALUE('Employee_Data'[location_city]),
        20,
        1
    )        

This measure sets a larger size for the selected city, making it stand out visually.

Steps to Implement:

1. Create the above measure in Power BI.
2. Go to the scatter plot visual and locate the Size input parameter.
3. Place the Selected | Size measure in the Size field of the scatter plot.

This will dynamically adjust the size of the data point for the selected city, making it prominently visible compared to others.

Conclusion

Highlighting selected items in Power BI using techniques like disconnected tables, conditional formatting, and pre-attentive processing not only enhances the visual appeal of your reports but also makes data interpretation more intuitive. By creatively using size, color, and other visual cues, you can guide your audience’s focus to key insights, making comparisons clear and impactful. These methods empower users to quickly grasp critical information, facilitating better decision-making and more effective data storytelling.

Let Power BI's highlighting capabilities bring your data to life, making complex analyses both accessible and engaging for your audience.