Here are some of our favourite Power Bi presentation tips, It is a short presentation of data visualisation best practices, focused on Power BI but the concepts can easily be applied to other BI tools such as Tableau, Cognos

2. Data Visualisation Best
Practice

3. Presentation contents:
• Have a PLAN
• Know your audience
• What type of dashboard?
• Data Types
• Use Appropriate Charts
• Make best use of space
• Refine the design
• Examples of Good and Bad

4. Have a PLAN
Follow a standard process
as much as possible when
introducing new
dashboards.
Try to keep consistency
with design, layout and
flow.
Purpose
• Audience
• Main Question
Layout
• Main Dashboard
• Supporting Reports
• Drill Downs
Analysis
• Understand the data
• Get user feedback
New Release
• Training
• Documentation
• Support

5. Know Your Audience
Understand the needs of the end user.
Design the dashboard at the relevant level for that
audience.
e.g. a CEO will be likely want a high level overview, whereas
a HR manager will tend to be focussed on people, skills and
training.

6. Types of Dashboards
Strategic
High Level, Low interactivity,
Long strategic timeframes.
Analytical
Highly interactive, Self
service, Ability to explore
data with context e.g.
Historical or Budgets.
Operational
Process Monitoring,
Routines, Immediate
timeframes.

7. Types of Data
Categorical / Nominal
Named items, with no relative
values.
Examples might include:
• Countries
• People
• Departments
Quantitative
Items that have a measured
value.
Examples:
• Sales £
• Prices
• Time
Ordinal
Named items that have a value
based order.
Examples:
• Premium, Standard, Budget
• High, Medium, Low

8. Use Appropriate Charts
Recommended Charts
Bullet graph – horizontal type gauge, more space efficient.
Bar graphs – great for comparatives, space efficient, used for comparatives.

9. Use Appropriate Charts
Recommended Charts
Stacked Bar Chart – useful to combine headline view with a breakdown into categories.
Combination bar and line – useful to show individuals values and the trend using the
line at the same time.
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
2018
2017
2016
2015
UK
Europe
USA
47%
48%
49%
50%
51%
52%
0.0
1.0
2.0
3.0
4.0
5.0
2015 2016 2017 2018
Sales
Cost of Sales
Gross Margin %

10. Use Appropriate Charts
Recommended Charts
Sparklines – very compact space efficient object, to give a general trend feel, to give
some context, used to decide whether to look in more detail.
Box Plots – useful to present distribution of data around a median, with upper and
lower values, e.g. defect rates.

11. Use Appropriate Charts
Recommended Charts
Treemaps – space efficient way of breaking down a hierarchy by values, to prompt
further exploration in more detail.
Pie Charts – useful to show breakdown of the whole, but not as space efficient as bar
charts or stacked bar charts.
There is a belief that Pie Charts are not the best presentation medium,
But, they can be a very useful tool to ‘filter’ data and they are widely understood.

12. Use Appropriate Charts
Recommended Charts
Tables
If used correctly, a table can often be
clearer to present the data than a chart.
.
City Actual Budget
London 5.1 5
Birmingham 3.2 3.3
Manchester 2.4 2
Sheffield 1.6 1.5
Maps
Can be very useful to measure relative
geographic data, which may be difficult to
see any other way, the example below shows
sales cannibalisation in Sheffield from a new
store opening in nearby Rotherham.

13. Make the best use of Space
Space is a significant
limiting factor.
Important to try to
keep to a familiar
standard.
Similar to reading left
to right, top to
bottom.
Very Important
•Main Message
•Key Measures
•Don’t use for logos
Secondary Importance
•Use for sub reporting / analysis
Secondary Importance
•Use for sub reporting / analysis
Least Important
•Use for least relevant parts
•Good for further sub analysis or drill through
•Good location for a logo
Most important area

14. Refine
Building the perfect dashboard is not something that can be done without an
iterative approach.
With the right PLAN methodology you can get off to a good start, with the basic
structure.
The key element is to learn what your audience needs and continue to refine, if
the end user doesn’t immediately understand what the dashboard is telling
them then it probably needs to change.

15. Example of a badly laid out dashboard
This dashboard
does present a lot
of information,
Sales, Budgets,
Labour costs.
It is just so difficult
to take the
information on
board.
There is no flow, its
too busy to read
quickly.

16. Example of a badly laid out dashboard
This dashboard
does present a lot
of information,
Sales, Budgets,
Labour costs.
It is just so difficult
to take the
information on
board.
There is no flow, its
too busy to read
quickly.
Too many
decimal places
Scroll Bars can
be frustrating
Prime space,
wasted with a
logo
Good, but needs
to show values or
use tooltips
Not space efficient,
generally substance
over form
Difficult to make
relevant comparisons
Can’t see the
categories, too many
colours
Lacking context, and
difficult to compare
values to anything
Looks good, but of
limited usefulness

17. Mistakes to avoid
• Fragmenting Data
• Lack of Context
• Over Elaboration
• Too many decimal
places
• Using too much
space for little data
value
• Too much clutter
• Unnecessary
graphics

18. Example of a better dashboard
This dashboard is
much easier to
follow.
Clear sections
encourage right to
left reading.
Lack of clutter
allows the data to
be more quickly
understood.

19. Best Practice - Recap
• Have a PLAN
• Know your
audience
• What type of
dashboard?
• Data Types
• Use Appropriate
Charts
• Make the best use of
space
• Refine with user
feedback

20. Hope you found this useful

21. For more Tips, Tricks and
Timesavers, visit our website
Tips and Timesavers | Select Distinct Limited
Credit: simon.harrison@selectdistinct.co.uk