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Design Compelling Dashboards

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Susan F
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9 views3 pages

Design Compelling Dashboards

Uploaded by

Susan F
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Design compelling dashboards

Dashboards are powerful visual tools that help you tell your data story. A dashboard is a tool
that monitors live, incoming data. It organizes information from multiple datasets into one
central location, offering huge time savings. Data analysts use dashboards to track, analyze,
and visualize data in order to answer questions and solve problems. For a basic idea of what
dashboards look like, refer to this article: “Real-world examples of business intelligence
dashboards.”

The beauty of dashboards


The following table summarizes the benefits of using a dashboard for both data analysts and
their stakeholders.

Benefits For data analysts For stakeholders


Share a single source of data with all Work with a comprehensive view of data, i
Centralization
stakeholders objectives, projects, processes, and more
Show and update live, incoming data in real
Visualization Spot changing trends and patterns more qui
time*
Understand the story behind the numbers to
Insightfulness Pull relevant information from different datasets
track of goals and make data-driven decisio
Create custom views dedicated to a specific Drill down to more specific areas of special
Customization
person, project, or presentation of the data interest or concern
It’s important to remember that changed data is pulled into dashboards automatically only if
the data structure is the same. If the data structure changes, you have to update the dashboard
design before the data can update live.

Tableau
There are many different visualization tools available. One of the most powerful is Tableau,
which supports a range of data sources and has advanced analytics capabilities that allow for
in-depth exploration of data trends and patterns. Tableau can handle more data and larger
datasets than many other tools and offers real-time data availability.

It does take some time to learn to use Tableau, but your efforts can be well-rewarded, as
Tableau visualizations are pleasantly interactive. For a dashboard to be successful, it needs to
engage users and help them learn. Tableau has put in a lot of effort to ensure that its users
have a great experience and the platform is accessible to everyone.

Create a dashboard
Here’s a process you can follow to create a dashboard, whether in Tableau or another
visualization tool:

1. Identify the stakeholders who need to see the data and how they will use it

Begin by asking effective questions. Check out this dashboard requirements gathering
worksheet to explore a wide range of good questions you can use to identify relevant
stakeholders and their data needs. This is a great resource to help guide you through this
process again and again.

2. Design the dashboard (what should be displayed)

Use these tips to help make your dashboard design clear and easy to follow:

 Use a clear header to label the information.


 Add short text descriptions to each visualization.
 Show the most important information at the top.

3. Create mockups if desired

A mockup is a simple draft of a visualization used for planning a dashboard and evaluating its
progress. This is optional, but a lot of data analysts like to sketch out their dashboards before
creating them.

4. Select the visualizations

You have a lot of options here. Which visualizations you select depends on the data story you
are telling. If you need to show a change in values over time, line charts or bar graphs might
be the best choice. If your goal is to show how each part contributes to the whole amount
being reported, a pie or donut chart is probably a better choice.

Two pie charts show an even distribution of 4 parts of a whole. The first pie chart is more
traditional, appearing as a solid circle. The second pie chart is styled to show the same data in
a doughnut shape.
To learn more about choosing the right visualizations, check out Tableau’s galleries:

 For more samples of area charts, column charts, and other visualizations, visit the
Tableau Dashboard Showcase. This gallery is full of great examples that were created
using real data; explore this resource on your own to get some inspiration.
 Explore Tableau’s Viz of the Day to check out visualizations curated by the
community. These are visualizations created by Tableau users and are a great way to
learn more about how other data analysts are using data visualization tools.

5. Create filters as needed


Filters show certain data while hiding the rest of the data in a dashboard. This can be a big
help to identify patterns while keeping the original data intact. It’s common for data analysts
to use and share the same dashboard, but manage their part of it with a filter. To dig deeper
into filters and find an example of filters in action, visit Tableau’s page on Filter Actions.
This is a useful resource to save and come back to when you start practicing using filters in
Tableau on your own.

Key takeaways
Just like how the dashboard on an airplane shows the pilot their flight path, your dashboard
does the same for your stakeholders. It helps them navigate the path of a project inside the
data. If you add clear markers and highlight important points on your dashboard, users will
understand where your data story is headed. Then, you can work together to make sure the
business gets where it needs to go.

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