Yellowfin's 18 design don'ts for effective Dashboard design

Time to Tee up and play Yellowfin's 18 design don't for effective
Dashboard design course.

The Front Nine:

[1] Use flashy visuals and chart types when simple alternatives are
capable of conveying the same message: Meaning must be derived from
dashboards quickly. If charts or graphs are overly garish or complex,
interpretation is hindered and usage rates will decline. When
considering data visualizations for your dashboards, ensure that you:

* Reduce the data to ink ratio: Follow the advice of Edward Tufte in
his renowned The Visual Display of Quantitative Information: Remove
anything that isn’t absolutely central to the interpretation of the
data. Only display objects that are vital to the accurate
interpretation and contextual understanding of the underlying data –
avoid all design aspects that are unconnected to the task of analytic
communication.
* Use color sparingly for maximum contrast to highlight important
data
* Make your data standout from chart and dashboard background
* Use gradients and gridlines carefully

[2] Think that a dashboard is final: Reporting needs constantly change
and dashboards have to change in accordance, to ensure the right
metrics are being reported on and displayed in the most appropriate
manner, to support current business strategy. To accommodate the
inevitability of changing business needs, adopt an iterative approach
to dashboard design.

[3] Select visualizations to represent metrics without considering the
values themselves: Different types of graphs highlight different types
of data, and features within a data set, in distinctive ways.
Carefully consider the information and message that each chart is
attempting to derive from your chosen metrics and values.

[4] Measure metrics that are not linked to specific business
objectives: The worth of even the most engaging dashboard will be
severely diminished if it reports on metrics unrelated to core
business objectives.

[5] Forget to secure agreement on dashboard KPIs and their definition:
Reaching consensus on the most crucial metrics and benchmarks will
allow you to produce understandable, actionable and uniform KPI
reports. Additionally, don’t assume that if everyone agrees on the
same KPIs that they also agree on how they should be measured.

* Use / display obscure metrics: Even if agreement is reached amongst
user groups regarding dashboard KPIs and metrics, ensure that the most
straightforward metrics are used to monitor progression towards
business goals. If users are unable to decipher the significance of a
report with a momentary look, its usefulness and purpose is moot.

[6] Deliver reports underpinned by poor data: Once management and
various business groups have reached consensus on the metrics that
each departmental, strategic or operational dashboard should measure
and monitor, ensure you are collecting the data needed to compile the
necessary reports. Incomplete or poor quality data will lead to
inaccurate dashboards and distrust amongst business users, who will
proceed to search elsewhere for their answers, rendering your
dashboards redundant.

[7] Design a dashboard that is complicated and cannot fit on a single
screen: The KPIs and values displayed on a BI dashboard are meant to
be able to be consumed quickly for understanding-at-a-glance. Whilst
users may choose to drill into a particular chart for extra detail,
they should be able to gain a high level overview quickly and
effortlessly.

[8] Include too many alert scenarios: It’s like the boy who cried
wolf. If people are regularly ‘alerted’ to events that most often
require no action, eventually, people will stop paying them
attention.

[9] Include no alert scenarios: If users are not notified of action
that needs to be taken as a result of a report, what’s the point of
the report? As stated before, reports need to be goal oriented. Users
need to be alerted to events that diverge from projections and desired
objectives, or when a predefined benchmark is reached.


The Back Nine:

[1] Try to deliver BI dashboards to everyone straight away: Begin by
delivering dashboards to a small and specific user group, building on
successes, and learning from mistakes.

[2] Design dashboards in isolation of intended user groups: Business
users are the ultimate dashboard ‘customers’. Think of a dashboard as
a product. Why would people want, and want to use, a product that does
not offer them the capacity to improve the efficiency and
effectiveness with which they can complete their routine workplace
duties? Let business needs drive the technology and its development –
not the other way round.

[3] Organize the information without considering its intended use: Not
only is the information displayed via a dashboard integral, but so is
the way it’s structured. Arrange information logically according to
priority level and intended use. The three most common types of
dashboard structure involve organizing information according to:

* Flow: Arrange information so that it can be read from left to right,
and/or up and down in a logical progression.
* Relationships: Position related reports together such as revenue and
expenditure.
* Grouping: Group reports according to common characteristics – you
might position all your geospatial reports at the top of your sales
dashboard.

[4] Present and update information without considering the frequency
of use: The frequency with which a particular user group accesses
their dashboard; be it daily or weekly; will affect the type of
reports displayed and the level of detail required.

[5] Provide no or little context to the information displayed: Numbers
in isolation are incapable of empowering a user to monitor business
processes and take action when required. To provide true insight and
enable a process or task to be effectively monitored, a data set must
be compared to other figures, such as quantitative targets or
historical information.

[6] Assume one sizes fits all: Measure/display KPIs relevant to the
specific department and job function of the individual receiving the
dashboard, taking into consideration such factors as:

* The amount of time a user has to view and react to information
presented on their dashboard on a daily basis
* Data expertise and skill

[7] Only create dashboards based on departmental factors: Decide on
the overriding purpose of each specific dashboard to help guide the
type of dashboard developed and delivered. For example, is your
dashboard:

* Broad or specific
* Strategic or operational
* Historical or real-time
* Uniform or customizable

[8] Neglect to provide interactivity: Dashboards by their very nature
provide a summary overview of key metrics and business drivers. Users
must be able to interact with their dashboards to drill down or
through summary reports to obtain deeper understanding, filter reports
for specific data, and share important information. If users have the
capacity to interact with data to attain more detailed information, it
will be simultaneously easier to produce uncluttered, clean, clear and
easily consumable dashboards.

[9] Neglect to present actionable information: A dashboard is a tool
to facilitate action. If users do not act as a result of reporting and
analytics, then it is not possible to derive Return on Investment
(ROI) from BI projects. Consider how the dashboard helps users to
understand information in a way that facilitates and empowers them to
act.


About Yellowfin

Yellowfin is a global Business Intelligence (BI) software vendor.
Yellowfin is a highly intuitive 100 percent Web-based reporting and
analytics solution.

www.yellowfinbi.com