The Secrets Behind Building User- Friendly Dashboards

The rise of new, interactive, data-driven dashboard solutions like Tableau and PowerBI has made developing successful dashboards, such as the one below, quick, easy, and accessible.

Departments of IT professionals and competent graphic designers are no longer required to develop a stunning data dashboard in the digital age. Your company's dashboard should be simple to use and serve as a valuable tool for making decisions. To support you on your path to data-driven success, we'll go through 5 dashboard design concepts to help you create beautiful dashboards.

1. Keep visualizations and dashboards simple and digestible

Dashboards should be simple and straightforward. Audiences prefer dashboards with just one main view that categorizes data into separate sections for easy understanding rather than complicated layouts. Some tips to this:

1. Your dashboard should provide the relevant information in about 5 seconds.
2. The most important insights should be displayed at the top, while trends in the middle and granular details towards the bottom or in a separate view
3. No more than five or nine visualizations should be displayed at any one time, and they should all fit on one screen so you can see everything clearly without having to scroll around

2. Choose the right visual for your purpose

The importance of selecting the correct data visualization types cannot be overstated. A missing or wrong chart type can undo all of your efforts. It's helpful to consider what kind of information you want to express before selecting a data visualization that's right for the job.

The goal of data visualization should be more than just pretty pictures; it needs to serve an intended purpose and convey specific facts in the most effective way possible.

Before choosing which type of visualization best suits your needs, consider what you want people reading about or seeing on screen:?

1. Relationship: the connection between two or more variables
2. Comparison: compare two or more variables side by side
3. Composition: breaking data into separate components
4. Distribution: range and grouping of values within data

3. Design to keep users engaged through interactiveness

A good responsive design allows the user to decide which data they want. The key is a clear, easily understood UI and allowing them control over exactly what needs to be shown in their dashboard.

With interactive dashboards, you can drive user insights into actions from within the dashboard itself which saves time!

With just a few clicks, you can examine your data from every possible perspective. You could zoom in and out on intervals of time or filter out data that don’t interest you - it's like having all the information at once but being able to view only necessary information as required.

4. Empower your Audience

You can make great strides in data visualization and dashboarding if you know your audience. For example, an HR dashboard might be designed differently than a marketing one because of their different priorities and needs when looking at the same information = these dashboards will help them with what they need!

When developing dashboards, keep the following points in mind:

• Whom is it designed for??Determine the most crucial character when creating a visualization or dashboard. Who is going to be looking at this information? What difficulties do they experience, and what impediments do they face in overcoming those difficulties?
• What decision do I want the user to make, and under what situation? Understand what decision(s) they want to make using the dashboard. Consider the frequency of the decision: is it once off or require frequent updates. The data display should be tailored to the frequency with which decisions are made.
• What activities do I want people to take due to this information??The visualizations should give them the confidence to act based on evidence. In many data visualizations, defining a threshold for when action is required, such as, it's critical when sales performance falls outside of a statistically significant norm for that specific period.

5. Use correct Data

Data visualization has three sorts of data: quantitative, ordinal, and categorical.

Different visual aspects perform better with different sorts of data. Line charts, for example, are a terrible choice for non-ordinal data because they imply continuity. Still, they function best with ordinal data, whereas scatter plots are ideal for two-dimensional quantitative data.

You should make sure you know what Data your visualization is based on. The following are some examples:

• Quantitative Data is used to determine how much of something there is.
• Ordinal Data is Data that follows a logical order and is logically arranged.
• Categorical Data is the information that is grouped.

So, what are the characteristics of a good dashboard? An effective data dashboard should be eye-catching yet aesthetically balanced, astute yet straightforward, accessible, user-friendly, and personalized to your aims and audience. Every dashboard you design should be tailored to a specific user group to assist users in integrating digital insights into company decision-making processes and converting them into positive strategic actions.

If you follow these five steps, your dashboards will not only impress your audience, but they will also make data analysis a lot easier for you.

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