How to make your dashboard user-friendly?
We spend an awful amount of time on a dashboard that ends up being hardly used. Hurts pretty bad, right? So you sit there and wonder, what went wrong? In most cases, it all comes down to how easy is it to use the dashboard.
When we design a dashboard, we should also think like the end-user and ask ourselves some basic questions
1. Is this overwhelming to look at?
2. Can I navigate through it on my own?
3. What does this chart show?
Now let’s look at these questions in detail.
Is this overwhelming to look at?
Tableau suggests limiting the number of views you include in your dashboard to two or three. If you add too many views, visual clarity and the big picture can get lost in the details. If you find that the scope of your story needs to grow beyond two or three views, you can always create more dashboards.
But in a real scenario, we end up having way more than 3–4 worksheets on a dashboard. So yes, try to keep worksheets at the minimum. Decide on a story that you want to convey with the dashboard. Don’t mix it up! For example, I’m talking about Alladin and the genie and suddenly I switch to pokemon. That’s weird, right? So this is what confuses the end user. If you’re not clear with the story, it would be hard to convey it properly.
I like to divide my data points as Why, What, and How. This is based on the theory by Simon Sinek
Can I navigate through it on my own?
“So, how do I get this?”If you hear this from your end user, then the navigation isn’t clear. And it’s time to re-think your design.
What can you do? Provide clear-cut instructions. For example, Make use of Icons to provide instruction.
One way is to use the shape and add instruction in the tooltip.
But sometimes the chart needs to be explained. In those cases, you can use a show/hide container and explain the chart.
The next item that could use some help is “Defining the action”. The end user will not know which chart has an action. You can either add an instruction for this in the tooltip.
Or find a way to show if there is an action. I really like the trick Ellen uses in her dashboards.
Show how to navigate through the dashboard visually. You can create an image with the instruction in ppt or any design tool (I have used Adobe XD).
Add information on the developer/team to reach out to in case of any concern.
What does this chart show?
Sometimes we choose “Cool” over “Simplicity” and this leads to a lot of confusion for the end-user.
So I built a really cool Sankey Chart (not that I expect it will ever happen in a business dashboard) and my end-user goes “That looks interesting. But what am I looking at?” Damn! So there goes my interesting chart which makes no sense to my end-user.
But it doesn’t mean you cannot use these charts. You need to choose your chart based on the level of understanding of your end user.
Another example, I choose a scatter plot to show the relationship between sales and profit. Now, this may seem like an obvious choice to many of you but it wasn’t well received by the end user of my dashboard. The customer was more comfortable with a bar, line, or pie charts and this had to be explained properly.
So when I choose a chart I take two things into consideration-
• Does the chart serves the purpose
• Is it understandable by the end user
Here is a chart guide that I use quite a lot
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ft-interactive/chart-doctor/master/visual-vocabulary/poster.png
I would wrap this post with a few examples of Business Dashboard
• Demo wealth and banking — Profitability by Ellen Blackburn
• Demo insurance dashboards — Renewal progress analysis by Ellen Blackburn
• Oops to Better — Tables by Ludovic Tavernier
• Flat Dashboard Design — Sales Person by Ludovic Tavernier
• 5 Types of Dashboards by Adam E McCann
• Expanding / Collapsing Sidebar by Keith Dykstra
• Superstore Sales Insights by Jacob Olsufka
• Help Desk Dashboard | #RWFD by Pradeep Kumar G
And last but not the least, the vizes submitted for Real World Fake Data Project (Initiative run by Mark Bradbourne)
https://public.tableau.com/en-us/search/vizzes/%23RWFD
I was inspired by so many vizes and decided to create my first Business Dashboard in Tableau Public:
SuperStore Dashboard
Happy Vizing! Thanks for the read :)
