A good dashboard makes us think directly about metrics rather than aesthetics itself. Therefore, it should be designed to facilitate ease of use. Since the best dashboard designs work on the subconscious level, it can be hard to pinpoint exactly what makes them so effective. But if we look beyond specific techniques for creating a dashboard, we’ll see three common themes.
- IT’S FUNCTIONAL.
A well-designed dashboard must first and foremost be functional. A dashboard is “a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives, consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance.”
Since the primary purpose of the dashboards is to clearly communicate our most important metric, it’s only logical for the design to enhance this functionality. Any design elements that hinder the objective should be discarded.
- IT’S INTUITIVE.
As mentioned earlier, dashboards should be glanceable. In order for a dashboard to be understandable at a glance, it must be intuitive. This involves two aspects: 1) removing cognitive barriers (such as misleading pie charts, 3-D visualizations and unnecessary information) and 2) properly visualizing and labeling the metrics.
- IT’S LIVE.
An effective, well-designed dashboard is always-on and refreshes automatically (i.e. the data doesn’t have to be manually updated). It’s easy to take this one for granted, but without live updates on the dashboard, your metrics might as well be buried in an email attachment or spreadsheet.
These common themes of KPI’s are a measurement of the result that is a consequence of a goal. As we discussed in the class call for action can also be influenced by the goal. Having this in mind and designing a dashboard with themed framework discussed above will make for a effective dashboards.
Source: https://www.geckoboard.com/blog/dashboard-design-what-makes-an-effective-kpi-dashboard/#.WKqIghIrLdc