PRINCIPLES OF DESIGNING A DASHBOARD

The advent of dashboard designing software has made dashboard designing quite a simple task. Data collection, refinement, quoting the references and linking the same constitute most of the work to be done before dashboard designing. It should be kept in mind that a dashboard is a tool that makes it easier for the viewer to make sense of the plethora of data and complicated relationships which has been assimilated in it. Hence, a dashboard should be simple, user friendly and eye-catching. Anybody would be able to design a near-perfect dashboard if they imbibe and put into practice the following few principles:

1. Right Chart Type: This might seem pretty obvious but it has the scope to destroy all the work previously done on the project. Selection of the right type of the chart has to be the foremost consideration before designing any dashboard. Different charts have different strengths and weaknesses and as such, care must be exerted in choosing among them.
2. Overcrowding the representation: A dashboard loses its purpose and becomes meaningless if the target audience cannot easily grasp the information given in that. That is exactly what happens when too much data is squeezed into a particular chart. The idea of making dashboards must to be to make the data representation lucid and not to put every bit of information together.
3. Playing with colours: Colours are great at commanding attention to the representation, but care needs to be exerted while choosing them. Intense colours may be used to highlight something of importance, but it might not be a good idea to use multiple dark colours as this may overwhelm the senses of the viewer and deflect the attention from the important things. Moreover, for comparison studies, it would be a better idea to use different gradients of the same colours.
4. Providing context: A dashboard is just a nugatory collection of figures, shapes and colours if no context is provided. Therefore, providing context is the most important part of any dashboard and should be at the top of the checklist. Some of it may seem obvious to the designer, but it is always a good idea to provide context for everything that the designer wishes the audience to know.
5. Consider the audience and the venue: Another easy to ignore, but a potentially tricky factor that to be considered is the type of audience, the venue and the media that is used to view the dashboard. Each dashboard should be tailored to suit the particular user group it is designed for.

Source : http://www.datapine.com/blog/dashboard-design-principles-and-best-practices/#