Dashboard Design / IxDA
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The document provides a comprehensive guide on dashboard design, emphasizing the need for user-centered design that transforms data into actionable insights. Key elements include understanding user needs, utilizing effective visualizations, maintaining simplicity, and following an iterative design process. It also discusses common pitfalls in dashboard design and highlights various tools and platforms available for creating dashboards.
Dashboard Design / IxDA
- 1. AINO TUOMINEN SPEAKER Business Analytics Consultant @Solita twitter: @ainotuominen M.Sc. in Engineering, B.A. in Arts Working in consulting / analytics and planning since 2006 Bachelor thesis about dashboards design process 2014
- 2. DASHBOARD DESIGN Design Process and Data Visualization for Dashboards
- 3. “The purpose of visualization is insight, not pictures.” Ben Schneiderman, Human-computer interaction lab, U. of Maryland CONTENTS How to Create a Good Dashboard Data Sources and Tools What is a Dashboard1 3 2
- 4. WHAT DASHBOARD? What is a dashboard and how to design one
- 5. ” What gets measured, gets managed. Peter Drucker (?)
- 6. A DASHBOARD What is it, anyway? Purpose: to visually display the most essential and actionable (real time) information needed to achieve objectives, on single view so that the information can be monitored at a glance.
- 8. HOW TO MAKE ONE? What should you consider when creating a dashboard concept
- 9. ” The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight. Carly Fiorina, Former CEO of HP
- 10. PROCESS IN 3 STEPS
- 11. THE USER People Before Features • Who is your user? • Why those personas need a dashboard? • What brings value to the user? • Where will they access the dashboard? • When do you need the dashboard? • How does the dashboard support your organizational objectives? YOU MUST HAVE AN INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR USER TO DESIGN FOR THEM.
- 12. STORY PRESENTATION Flow of the story from left to right and from up down (normally). Use visual aids to support the flow. Flow 1 Present the relationship of the data in a clear way Relationship 2 Group data meaningfully. Grouping 3
- 13. A Year in review
- 14. DATA GRAPHS .. • Use graphs to: • Discern relationships between data series • Identify patterns, trends and exceptions • Present large data-amounts • Choose graph type based on data • Remove any component that is not contributing to the message. KEEP IT SIMPLE!
- 15. ANSCOMBE’S QUARTET • All the summary statistics you’d think to compute are close to identical. • Plot these four data sets on x/y coordinate plane to be able to see the differences. WHY GRAPHS? Graphs are good to identify patterns, trends and exceptions
- 17. ” Overview first, zoom and filter, then details- on-demand. The visual information-seeking mantra, Ben Schneiderman
- 18. DESIGN PROCESS Presentation Methods 2 What presentation methods are available in the selected technology platform? User / Information Content 1 What information is the user looking for? What needs does he have? What data is available? ? Data Scoping Tools 3 What tools are available that the user can use to restrict the data on screen
- 19. How to Use Color 6 How to use color to highlight the most relevant information. Use color for alerts and to guide to action. Visual Style 7 What choices should be made for the visual style? Remember to consider the brand guidelines. Also, the visual style should not confuse or introduce meaningless variety. aBcdEf 123456 Layout 4 What kind of layout supports the story in a meaningful order? How to bring out the most important key metrics? It’s also good to apply the golden ratio. Drill Through 5 How can the user find more context information for the data by drilling through? DESIGN PROCESS
- 23. ” If the insight aren’t actionable your target audience won’t adopt the dashboard a decision-support instrument. Lilian Pierson, the author of Data Science for Dummies
- 24. FUNCTIONALITY Make a choice what functionality supports your use case Comparison Alerts Export / Print Responsiveness Mouse Over Drill Down Filters
- 25. Use colors to highlight what is important or to group what belongs together. Avoid unnecessary confusing use of different colors. Careful with colors Gauges are not very effective. They have no value to compare with. There are better and more effective visualizations available than gauges that also take up less space. No more gauges Increase the ratio between data to ink. Highlight what’s important, leave out all effects that are just decorative. Less is more! 1 3 2 8 TIPS for Better Dashboards Production Orders Orders 1,2 k€ 1,2 k€ Orders
- 26. If you want to compare two series, like targets and actuals, you can also show and highlight the difference. Highlight negative values to bring out the anomaly. Show the difference The pie chart is very popular but it’s not very effective. It’s difficult to compare the pie sizes. No more pies With a bar chart, always allow the vertical axis to start at zero (0) to prevent graphs from being wrongly interpreted. Start at zero 4 6 5 8 TIPS for Better Dashboards
- 27. A horizontal bar is often the best choice when long labels are used or when you want to show the hierarchy. Different angle Use a neutral dashboard and use highlights to immediately show what is really important. Highlight important 7 8 8 TIPS for Better Dashboards
- 28. ” If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. Unknown
- 29. INEFFECTIVE1 The presentation does not create insight, or the data does not promote action. MEANINGLESS2 The presentation introduces meaningless variety or data. CONFUSING3 Confusing the user with poor presentation. 3 COMMON PITFALLS
- 30. Dashboard Design Mistakes Too many colors poor readability 3D effects Small font Confusing color Lack of graphs Small font Too much color Lack of space
- 31. 1 KEY DATA IN CONTEXT 2 DENSE INFORMATION, NOT CLUTTERED 3 HIGHLIGHT EXCEPTIONS 4 ZERO LEARNING CURVE 5 ACCESS TO SUPPORTING DETAILS A GOOD DASHBOARD A Good Dashboards is Graphic Oriented and a Single Page
- 32. AGILE DESIGN PROCESS Apply agile design • Iterate through client testing to improve usability and relevance • Observation in real situations with real users is better than just asking questions • Collect user statistics if possible • Test, test, test, … All the time if possible
- 33. SOURCES AND TOOLS? What kind of tools, platforms and data sources are available?
- 34. PLATFORMS • In a typical project the data source is given and often the tools can be from the same vendor. • You should first evaluate the platform. Understand the basic structure and responsive nature of the platform. GARTNER
- 35. PLATFORMS Freeboard Mozaïk Dashbuilder Grafana Stashbord Pentaho Birt Etc, etc… IBM Cognos Analytics Tableau Birst Microsoft Power BI Qlik Sense SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio and Lumira Google Analytics Solutions IBM Watson Analytics Geckoboard DashThis HappyMetrix DataPine Dash Kipfolio
- 36. TOOLS .. • The concept and a prototype can be created with i.e. Adobe Illustrator + Invision / Adobe XD • There are Open Source tools for data visualizations like Java script libraries. • Many companies offer free trial periods, like Power BI, SAP Lumira, Tableau.
- 37. .. • Preferably real time data (but sometimes near real time is good enough) • Data from your: • Cloud application? • Computer or a file sharing service? • Database? DATA SOURCES