Data Visualisation Best Practice

Dashboards are a great way to present the data your audience needs to know. But, if they done wrong, they can do more harm than good.

This best practices guide for creating dashboards walks you through the key steps to consider when designing a dashboard.

The key to a good dashboard is to make it simple yet informative. It should be easy for your audience to understand the message you’re trying to convey and quickly take action on any insights or recommendations.

Its important to remember that the best dashboards are built iteratively with input and feedback from the end users

We call this having a P.L.A.N.

Purpose, Layout, Analysis and New Release, this cycle ensures that the dashboard is fit for purpose and continues to be as the needs of the end user may change over time

Know your audience, ensure that the information presented to the user is relevant and thoroughly understood

The guide describes three main kinds of dashboards: strategic, operational and analytical.

Types of data and understanding their nuances is a prime factor, from categorical and nominal data, to Ordinal and Quantitative

Understanding which type of chart to use for the most efficient presentation of your data type and timescales

Space is a significant limiting factor in dashboard design, but not all space is created equal, the human eye is drawn to specific areas more than others

The guide shows an example of a badly laid out dashboard, and compares it to a well laid out dashboard

These best practice tips are suitable for a wide range of business intelligence tools, the examples were created using Microsoft Power BI, but can equally be applied to Tableau, Google Data Studio or even Excel