12 Dashboard design tips for better data visualization

hello i'm dale from geckoboard and today i'm going to give you 12 tips that will help you design the perfect dashboard [Music] data data data businesses today are surrounded by data which is nice but it's not that helpful if you need to make quick decisions this is where dashboards can help dashboards take your most important data and present it in a way where you can easily tell what's going on at a glance because dashboards need to get across information quickly and efficiently the design and layout of the dashboard becomes all that more important by the end of this video you're going to have the knowledge to design quality dashboards that let people know exactly what's going on so the most important piece of advice we have is to be clear about what it is you're trying to achieve with your dashboard who is this dashboard for how will it help with the decision making are they trying to monitor some kind of system or process or perhaps they're trying to track the progress towards a goal so the clearer you are on the purpose of your dashboard the easier it's going to be to know what data to include and how to present it think of data communication like a game of catch the better you throw the ball the easier it is for the other person to catch it the most common mistake designers make is overloading the user with information in other words they throw too many balls at once think carefully about the audience of this dashboard do they need to see a detailed breakdown of each customer account every time they look at the dashboard or would a high level number be sufficient the key here is working with your audience sure you need to understand what they do need but you also need to understand what they don't need and then you need to be bold in deciding what to leave out another way to improve your dashboard design is by reducing the amount of visual noise now the american statistician edward tuft actually coined a term for this concept data ink ratio data inc is quite literally the ink that communicates your data whereas non-data inc is the stuff that doesn't these days you're unlikely to be printing out your visualizations with ink but the principle still applies well-designed dashboards aim to use as little non-data ink as possible in other words they have a good data ink ratio in practice this means removing unnecessary grid lines icons color labels or anything else that doesn't actually communicate data what you will find is that looking at dashboards with a bad data rank ratio is incredibly hard work for the user especially if they're looking at this dashboard several times a day decorative elements may grab your attention the first time you look at a dashboard but the novelty very quickly wears off and over time these things just start to get in the way overly precise numbers can actually slow down our comprehension ideally you should round your numbers to a point where the differences between figures represent a material change as you can see here abbreviations can also make it easier to understand what's going on okay so tell me which is bigger red or blue need more time okay now try easier right when selecting a visualization you should always choose the one which most clearly and efficiently communicates the data that means it should take as little time as possible to understand what's going on in general we humans aren't very good at comparing and contrasting spatial area that means that pie charts and area charts are rarely the best choice of visualization i know it can be tempting to choose a different visualization just because we want to spice things up a little bit but just don't do it if choosing the right visualization means choosing the same visualization then that's fine you're doing your job most of the time you're going to be using a combination of numbers bars lines and tables okay so when i was a kid before eating things like m m's i would often group them according to color i was a pretty weird kid but at least this type of worrying behavior makes you more likely to be a good dashboard designer in the future why because good dashboards group related metrics so if somebody wants to see the metrics related to revenue don't make them look here and here and here instead group them plus you save on non-data inc because now you need less labels if you have a related group of metrics it's helpful to be consistent in your choice of visualization for example let's take a look at this dashboard so here we have the number of orders each day and here we have the value of those orders clearly there's a relationship between these metrics so we're going to want to use the same visualization to help the user understand that relationship again don't worry if this feels like you're being repetitive what you're actually doing is helping people think about related metrics in the same way not all kpis are equal and a good dashboard should reflect there if there's a metric you want people to pay attention to make it bigger put it in the top left hand corner the top left hand corner is where our eyes are naturally drawn followed by the other edges of the dashboard numbers on their own don't actually tell us that much let's say yesterday's revenue is five thousand dollars is that good bad normal unusual how does it compare to last week has it gone up has it gone down how does it compare to our targets giving context to a number in the form of a status indicator or a comparison can quickly tell us the significance of that number just be aware of the first rule too many status indicators can create noise if your entire dashboard is red and green then the significance of those colors is greatly reduced similarly a number of a chart isn't very useful if we don't know what it represents use labels to clearly state what the metric represents and also what time span your label should be clear and concise avoid notes explanations and caveats these things might feel like they're helpful the first time somebody uses a dashboard but it very quickly becomes visual noise so far in this video we've covered 10 rules for designing the perfect dashboard but the thing about design rules like all rules is that they're made to be broken at the end of the day dashboard design is about more than just how efficiently you can lay data out on a 16x9 rectangle ultimately it's about people it's about to what extent you can get those people to engage with the information and sometimes the most engaging dashboards do break the rules for example at geckoboard one of our company dashboards includes a list of recent subscribers in a strict design sense it's probably not as important as some of the other elements on this dashboard but we include it because it sparks conversations and increases engagements with the dashboard overall so whether it's a twitter feed new deals or a daily cat gif remember that it's okay to break the rules if it means that people engage with your dashboard just don't overdo it the last thing to say is that you should keep tweaking and evolving your dashboard the best way to tell if you've designed a great dashboard is by using it does it help people do what it's supposed to do make sure you continue to listen to feedback because when it comes to dashboards you can always improve so there we have it 12 tips for designing the perfect dashboard now all the lessons um we've covered today are applicable to any form of dashboard design but you may have noticed that in many of the examples i've been using our very own dashboard tool geckoboard geckoboard makes it easy to create professional kpi dashboards it connects with over 80 data sources and it's just much easier to use than many of the complicated bi tools out there and one of the best parts is that geckoboard is built with all of these design practices in mind so it makes it very very hard to go wrong so if you're looking to build dashboards in a matter of minutes then head over to geckoboard.com and sign up for a free trial you'll be making dashboards within within no time at all otherwise i hope you enjoyed this video um if you did please like and subscribe to the channel and if you've got any questions about dashboard design about geckoboard just leave them in comments i will get back to you thank you once again and have a great day [Music]

Channel: Geckoboard

Views: 69,763

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Id: t3cAUt7sOQg

Length: 9min 51sec (591 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 04 2022