Slides of the presentation I gave at the IxDA meet-up in Helsinki on 23.2.2017 on dashboard design esitys dashboard

1. AINO TUOMINEN
SPEAKER
Business Analytics Consultant @Solita
twitter: @ainotuominen
M.Sc. in Engineering, B.A. in Arts
Working in consulting / analytics and
planning since 2006
Bachelor thesis about dashboards design
process 2014

2. DASHBOARD
DESIGN
Design Process and Data Visualization for Dashboards

3. “The purpose of
visualization is
insight, not
pictures.”
Ben Schneiderman, Human-computer interaction lab, U.
of Maryland
CONTENTS
How to Create a Good Dashboard
Data Sources and Tools
What is a Dashboard1
3
2

4. WHAT DASHBOARD?
What is a dashboard and how to design one

5. ” What gets measured,
gets managed.
Peter Drucker (?)

6. A DASHBOARD
What is it, anyway?
Purpose:
to visually display the most essential
and actionable (real time)
information needed to achieve
objectives, on single view so that
the information can be monitored at a
glance.

8. HOW TO MAKE ONE?
What should you consider when creating a dashboard concept

9. ” The goal is to turn data
into information, and
information into
insight.
Carly Fiorina, Former CEO of HP

10. PROCESS IN 3 STEPS

11. THE USER
People Before Features
• Who is your user?
• Why those personas need a dashboard?
• What brings value to the user?
• Where will they access the dashboard?
• When do you need the dashboard?
• How does the dashboard support your
organizational objectives?
YOU MUST HAVE
AN INTIMATE
KNOWLEDGE OF
YOUR USER TO
DESIGN FOR
THEM.

12. STORY PRESENTATION
Flow of the story from left to
right and from up down
(normally). Use visual aids to
support the flow.
Flow
1
Present the relationship of the
data in a clear way
Relationship
2
Group data meaningfully.
Grouping
3

13. A Year in review

14. DATA GRAPHS
..
• Use graphs to:
• Discern relationships between data series
• Identify patterns, trends and exceptions
• Present large data-amounts
• Choose graph type based on data
• Remove any component that is not
contributing to the message.
KEEP IT SIMPLE!

15. ANSCOMBE’S QUARTET
• All the summary statistics you’d
think to compute are close to
identical.
• Plot these four data sets on x/y
coordinate plane to be able to see the
differences.
WHY GRAPHS?
Graphs are good to identify patterns, trends and exceptions

16. https://www.labnol.org/software/find-right-chart-type-for-your-data/6523/
DesignedbyAndrewAbela
On-linetool:http://labs.juiceanalytics.com/chartchooser/index.html

17. ” Overview first, zoom
and filter, then details-
on-demand.
The visual information-seeking mantra, Ben Schneiderman

18. DESIGN PROCESS
Presentation Methods
2
What presentation methods are
available in the selected technology
platform?
User / Information
Content
1
What information is the user
looking for? What needs does he
have? What data is available?
?
Data Scoping Tools
3
What tools are available that the
user can use to restrict the data on
screen

19. How to Use Color
6
How to use color to highlight the
most relevant information. Use
color for alerts and to guide to
action.
Visual Style
7
What choices should be made for
the visual style? Remember to
consider the brand guidelines. Also,
the visual style should not confuse
or introduce meaningless variety.
aBcdEf
123456
Layout
4
What kind of layout supports the
story in a meaningful order? How to
bring out the most important key
metrics? It’s also good to apply the
golden ratio.
Drill Through
5
How can the user find more context
information for the data by drilling
through?
DESIGN PROCESS

23. ” If the insight aren’t actionable your
target audience won’t adopt the
dashboard a decision-support
instrument.
Lilian Pierson, the author of Data Science for Dummies

24. FUNCTIONALITY
Make a choice what functionality supports your use case
Comparison Alerts Export / Print
Responsiveness Mouse Over Drill Down Filters

25. Use colors to highlight what is important or to
group what belongs together. Avoid
unnecessary confusing use of different colors.
Careful with colors
Gauges are not very effective. They have no
value to compare with. There are better and
more effective visualizations available than
gauges that also take up less space.
No more gauges
Increase the ratio between data to ink.
Highlight what’s important, leave out all
effects that are just decorative.
Less is more!
1
3
2
8 TIPS
for Better Dashboards
Production
Orders
Orders 1,2 k€
1,2 k€
Orders

26. If you want to compare two series, like targets and
actuals, you can also show and highlight the difference.
Highlight negative values to bring out the anomaly.
Show the difference
The pie chart is very popular but it’s not very effective.
It’s difficult to compare the pie sizes.
No more pies
With a bar chart, always allow the vertical axis to start
at zero (0) to prevent graphs from being wrongly
interpreted.
Start at zero
4
6
5
8 TIPS
for Better Dashboards

27. A horizontal bar is often the best choice
when long labels are used or when you
want to show the hierarchy.
Different angle
Use a neutral dashboard and use highlights to
immediately show what is really important.
Highlight important
7
8
8 TIPS
for Better Dashboards

28. ” If you can’t explain it
simply, you don’t
understand it well
enough.
Unknown

29. INEFFECTIVE1
The presentation does
not create insight, or the
data does not promote
action.
MEANINGLESS2
The presentation
introduces
meaningless variety
or data.
CONFUSING3
Confusing the user
with poor
presentation.
3 COMMON PITFALLS

30. Dashboard Design Mistakes
Too many colors
poor readability
3D effects
Small font
Confusing color
Lack of graphs
Small font
Too much color
Lack of space

31. 1
KEY DATA IN
CONTEXT
2
DENSE
INFORMATION,
NOT CLUTTERED
3
HIGHLIGHT
EXCEPTIONS
4
ZERO
LEARNING
CURVE
5
ACCESS TO
SUPPORTING
DETAILS
A GOOD DASHBOARD
A Good Dashboards is Graphic Oriented and a Single Page

32. AGILE DESIGN PROCESS
Apply agile design
• Iterate through client testing to improve
usability and relevance
• Observation in real situations with real
users is better than just asking questions
• Collect user statistics if possible
• Test, test, test, … All the time if possible

33. SOURCES AND TOOLS?
What kind of tools, platforms and data sources are available?

34. PLATFORMS
• In a typical project the data source is
given and often the tools can be from
the same vendor.
• You should first evaluate the
platform. Understand the basic
structure and responsive nature of
the platform.
GARTNER

35. PLATFORMS
Freeboard
Mozaïk
Dashbuilder
Grafana
Stashbord
Pentaho
Birt
Etc, etc…
IBM Cognos Analytics
Tableau
Birst
Microsoft Power BI
Qlik Sense
SAP BusinessObjects Design
Studio and Lumira
Google Analytics Solutions
IBM Watson Analytics
Geckoboard
DashThis
HappyMetrix
DataPine
Dash
Kipfolio

36. TOOLS
..
• The concept and a prototype can
be created with i.e. Adobe
Illustrator + Invision / Adobe XD
• There are Open Source tools for
data visualizations like Java
script libraries.
• Many companies offer free trial
periods, like Power BI, SAP
Lumira, Tableau.

37. ..
• Preferably real time data (but
sometimes near real time is
good enough)
• Data from your:
• Cloud application?
• Computer or a file sharing
service?
• Database?
DATA SOURCES

38. ANALYTICS IS
KNOWLEDGE IS
POWER.