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There are 4 phases of designing a dashboard: What is? What if? What wows? What works?
What is? – This is the part that no one likes. It involves understanding the data, involves a ton of sticky notes and sadly, a 101 crash course on doing the work. People tend to skip this part.
What if? – This is the part which most people want to do first, without understanding the data. We simply throw ideas out here, just like spaghetti at a wall. If it doesn’t stick, it will, at a later stage. Many ideas come and we have to filter out some of the outlandish ones.
What wows? – This is the moment when you feel you have conquered the world and you’re at cloud 9. We begin to realize what Tableau can do. The goal here is prototyping.
What works? – This is the final product. Usually, by this point, we have clarity and have a rock solid dashboard.
Reference : http://www.tableaufit.com/humans-dashboards-tableau-design-meets-ideo-aka-design-thinking/