It’s time to be brutal! And political-themed dashboards will take the brunt of it.
With Szilvia facilitating the session, Jordan, Rick and our special guest Brad Edgar discuss the merits of various dashboard designs.
Let’s get started!
1 – Readability Issues
It’s easy to get carried away when it comes to designing dashboards. And this many a times take a toll on the readability. It is essential to keep the objective in mind throughout this process. The following are few blunders that were identified by our experts:
- Lack of clear units on, say, columns charts will render those meticulously calculated metrics redundant. Also, it is essential to keep units uniform in all charts that are meant to be compared.
- Comparable items not juxtaposed with each other makes it hard to the reader to gauge the situation. They should be presented next to each other without looking cluttered.
- Employing an annoy color palette or using a font size which is too small make dashboards visually unappealing.
- Ideally, clunky gadgets like thermometers or speedometers should not be used. If you have to use them, make sure they are working properly, adding a dimension to the analysis presented and gelling in with the overall theme of the dashboard
2 – Evolution of Dashboard Design
As Szilvia moves through different dashboards, it is easy to spot some of the features that dominate present-day dashboard designing. Some of these principles are as follows:
- Aesthetically pleasing use of white space.
- Use of a stylish color scheme that also serves the purpose of differentiating favorable movement in metrics from unfavorable ones.
- The most important pieces of information, the key numbers, are presented separately and prominently.
3 – Good Practice
Our experts also gave away some very useful tips:
- Most important information should be presented in top left corner of the dashboard. This is where people generally focus on at the start.
- If you plan to use animations in your dashboards, make sure it will be considered acceptable by the users of your work.
What’s next?
Do you have any tips of your own? Share with all the users in the comments section below.
And make sure your friends and colleagues who work with dashboards know about these awesome pointers.
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