Useful insights or just piling up the information overload?

How you can benefit from User Experience Design in dashboards.

You might rely on dashboards to get the right information out of data, but the insights seem to be lost in the many graphs on the page. Maybe you have found a KPI but can not figure out what it exactly represents. Or you need to scroll down endless tables while it would have been easier to just open an Excel file. These kind of frustrations are tied to the design of the dashboard and can be prevented.

Often, reports are made quickly to satisfy data requirements, almost like an afterthought to the data analysis. However, designing a dashboard that is well understood by its users needs a proper design process. That’s where Design Thinking, and more specifically User Experience (UX) Design, makes a real difference. It mimics the mindset of a designer to generate effective dashboards.

User Experience Design puts the end-user needs above the assumptions of the creator. This means as creator you need to identify who the users are, what their background knowledge and experience level in the matter is, how comfortable the user is with the reporting tool, and most importantly, what kind of user questions need to be answered. This requires a brainstorm session with the potential end-users and a testing phase of the dashboard prototype. This provides the context on the user needs and direct feedback on the usability of the dashboard.

The Design Thinking framework:

This year I had the chance to perform UX Design to the dashboard development at one of our customers, working on a forecasting validation dashboard. The main goal was identifying products that need specific attention during a forecasting cycle due to inconsistent forecast numbers or deviating sales order behaviour. The secondary goal was to consolidate forecasting figures for different teams (demand, sales and inventory). During the kick-off we identified the specific needs of the teams and how to visualize the information so it was understood clearly by all parties. After creating the first version of the dashboard, we tested the dashboard with a group of representatives from the different teams. Firstly, we discussed their first impressions. Afterwards, I sat down (virtually) with a representative of the sales and demand teams and was not part of the development at an earlier stage. With her unbiased perspective I tested the usability of the report by letting her perform tasks on the interpretation of the data and the interaction of the dashboard. Her feedback provided clear change requests that improved the earlier dashboard design. The customer was satisfied with the final product, as they stated in the project review:

“Overall we are very satisfied with the dashboard that was created. A clear plan was set up to reach dashboard we wanted, including insights that came throughout the design of the dashboard.”

Thus, the collaboration with the user and the mimicking of the Design Thinking framework helped creating such efficient dashboard.

Want to understand to value of design in reporting? Reach out to me or EyeOn via [email protected]