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A dashboard provides overview, summaries or
exceptions at a glance, not all the details. It draws your attention to something that
needs action.
·
A dashboard provides easy access to supporting
details.
·
Dashboard needs to fit in one screen, having to
scroll prevents users from having a consolidated overview.
·
Dashboards are interactive. They should allow filtering,
drill down to details and slicing/dicing of data. It is best to provide these capabilities by
clicking on data itself.
·
The most important area of dashboard is top left,
display most important metrics there. The least important area is lower right
corner.
·
Highlight the most important data or exceptions.
Different font color, background color, bigger font, darker font or color contrast
are some of the ways to make important
things stand out.
·
Use color sparingly. Soft colors are better. Use
single hue with different intensities to show low/high values.
·
Refrain from displaying excessive precession. E.g. $104 K instead of $104,557.86 .
·
Provide rich context for data. The 3 Ts for
context are Target, Trend and Typical.
e.g. Just showing revenue of $11.2 million
will not tell if the we are doing good/bad. Instead show actual revenue of $11.2, budget
revenue of $13 M (Target) and same day
last revenue of $12 M year (Trend). Encourage comparison. Provide evaluation e.g. Check Mark/Cross Mark or Traffic light to
indicate how we are doing.
·
Minimize non-data ink. This includes unnecessary
grid lines, coloring, border, fill color etc. The supporting non-data ink (axis, borders)
should be muted and have low visual impact.
·
Eliminate or reduce usage instructions on main
page, provide hyperlinks or pop-up
windows instead. On similar lines eliminate or minimize company logos.
·
There can be multiple dashboards for different functions
of business.
·
Dashboards are customized for the audience.
·
Selecting right metrics is key for dashboards.
·
Dashboard Components (Coming up).
o Bullet
Graphs, Gauges & Meters for Showing KPIs.
o Sparkline
for trends.
o Line
charts for time series.
o Bar
Chart for Categorical Comparison.
o Scorecards
for KPIs.
