Dashboard is used to provide relevant and timely information to its audience. It is not used to display designer’s artistic and technical capability. Therefore, keeping it simple and focus on the core message is the primary goal for the designer.
Avoid some visualization components that are not directly contributing to the message:
- Logos
- Navigation
- Non-essential Text: to minimum labeling and instructions.
- Too much color
- 3-Dimensional objects
- Horizontal or vertical guide line: when overuse, may detract attention from the data.
- Too much detail
Keep these practices in mind:
- Who are you trying to impress: the most effective dashboards target a specific group of audiences and present data specific to that use case.
- Select the right type of dashboard: what kind of information that audience want to take way from the dashboard.
- Group data logically: use space wisely. Because of western language, our eyes usually start from the top left-hand corner and move to the right. Hence, letting audiences discover something new at the top-left-hand corner.
- Make the data relevant to the audience
- Present the most important metric only: be clear, simple, and effective.
- Present up to date data
Keep dashboard simple and focus on the core message are primary goals. The dashboard below showing effectiveness and simplicity.
- Simple color: users are not overwhelmed but understand at one glance.
- Number and change: it summarizes important number to sales department and lets users know the details of the change.
- Story: the graph on this dashboard deliver a clear story of US monthly sales. All the important KPI are included. This helps decision maker to develop strategy. Moreover, graphs are grouped logically. From left to right, it moves from big picture to details and each supports previous one. Although there is no description, it delivers a clear story.
- Filter: although it is the details information less important putting on the right-hand side, it clearly shows the background of the story.
Reference:
https://www.geckoboard.com/blog/designing-and-building-dashboards-data-visualisations/#.WJ5VcBIrImo
https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/blog/2013/10/dashboard-layout-and-design