Dashboard Design: 5-Step Guide and Main Practices
Dashboard design is one of the most essential points when it comes to the data visualization process. Fundamental principles must be followed to develop a successful dashboard so that our experts handcrafted this article to help you display actionable data that play crucial role in your project performance.
We will consider dashboard design best practices, what stands for this term, how to design one within a 5-step guide and many other points. The layout for dashboards is one of the most efficient ways to display data and relevant information. Therefore, you are able to overview your obstacles and monitor information at a glance.
In our exploration of designing dashboards, we will cover everything you need to investigate this technique, and give you a comprehensive understanding of principles that lie at the heart of data visualization. Let’s jump right into the article.
What is dashboard design?
While we are stepping into the topic of designing dashboards we can’t leave behind the term meaning — to talk in a nutshell it has become a trending topic to discuss in recent years. However, many businesses are still not aware of the usage and how it can be implemented. For this reason, we are offering this theoretical article starting with the definition.
The best dashboard design is created for a visual display of data consolidated within a single monitor. By visually representing essential information, you make it easier to understand and allocate your time and money resources.
Dashboard design example.
As for readability and intuitive perception, dashboards have to be represented with a single glance. Since they are highly customizable, you are able to control their content to make it within an array of techniques — bar graphs, tables, color coding, widgets and gadgets, annotations and callouts.
To operate intentionally, dashboard UX design has to be modified and meet the requirements of end-users — answer their questions, be a tool for understanding how the company meets its objectives and business goals.
Keep in mind that the leading advantage of dashboards is to represent the visual part of data within various graphic elements. You are transforming raw information into actionable insights, making complex things easier and more accessible. Effective instrument boards simplify the data analysis process. Subsequently, the flexibility of good dashboard design has the ability to draw and serve the main purpose — to make critical business decisions based on a data-driven approach.
There are also a number of possible variants of control panels — according to your business needs and purpose, for example, marketing dashboards, operational, performance, strategic, HR and others. Each of them focuses on a particular topic catering to users’ needs.
The importance of dashboard UI & UX design
Simplified way of data visualization and performance is essential for every business — you can make critical decisions and assessments. Since you are able to present a large quantity of data, thereby you are able to represent better results within your product or service operation.
There are a multitude of reasons why implementing dashboards is a perfect idea for gaining momentum and providing a holistic view of your company’s operations. We will consider the most unobvious ones that can’t be tracked by the untrained eye:
Most important reasons why implementing dashboard to the design is important.
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Data clarity and understandability. Ensure that the dashboard interface is intuitive and clear, so that users have to be able to quickly grasp the layout, navigate through different visualizations, and easily interpret the presented data without any confusion.
Therefore you can’t ignore accessibility within dashboard design ideas — designing interface you have to consider novice users and provide sophisticated tools for advanced users. We mean tooltips, documentation, customizable features, etc.
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Efficiency and productivity. Using dashboards for UI and UX design you can improve the named options by streamlining workflows, optimizing cognitive load and allow users to focus on representative data.
Further, your workers will be able to make more informed decisions instead of wrestling with the interface and user experience.
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Increased level of customization and responsiveness. Since every person has its own requirements for website dashboard design, you are able to present them with such a solution — including drag-and-drop functionality, adjusting the visual part of your dashboard, etc.
Moreover, the responsive UX design of your dashboard proves seamless adaption of different devices — users can reach the control panel using tablets, PCs, or smartphones.
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Visually appealing design for users. Paramount features are essential, still, don’t forget that users have to easily perceive your data to drive insights. Therefore you can capture users attention and maintain their interests in the control panel through the use of various tools.
For example, you can use icons, typography, and innumerable data visualization techniques for dashboard design UI — tables, graphs, or else to present not a bland dashboard but visually appealing UI and interactive user experience.
In summary, in terms of UI and UX it’s essential to create user-friendly interfaces that are simultaneously attractive and efficient. You have to prioritize clarity, accessibility, high level of customization so that you will reach the highest tier of user satisfaction and drive positive outcomes for your service or product.
How to design a dashboard?
Since you expect standardized creation, here we are going to inspect the development process of a console within basic steps. However, not every business owner is familiar with what is involved in dashboard design principles of building.
We will explain it in understandable terms below so that you can realize what to expect from these steps and how to develop a control panel that meets your expectations and business needs. For now, let’s jump right into the stages.
Step 1: Know your audience
Learn the needs of your intended audience, as it’s the first crucial step you need to accomplish. Define what your end-users need to know and analyze what is the purpose of using your dashboard. To put it simple just imagine yourself as a target user — what you would like to overview within a console panel.
Before designing dashboard it is important to understand its the purpose.
Don’t lose the point of developing an effective dashboard design — you are making it for people who will overview it and would like to receive data for the decision-making process that is based on specific insights within your dashboard.
Keep in mind that all the data displayed on your dashboard needs to be not complex but well-visualized so that users spend less time covering their needs in insights and data explanations.
Step 2: Define objectives
Start with clearly defining the intended audience’s needs and expectations determining what data needs to be collected and represented, what are your business goals to reach within the achieving process. You need to paint a clear picture of who are your users and what they would like to overview within a dashboard.
4 questions what will help to define the objectives before designing a dashboard.
Overall, such a research within dashboard UI UX will help you narrow down the level of details required for analysis. Once that is settled you are able to provide context and insights about your business. Contextualizing the data requires providing meaningful insights and explanations helping users interpret further data.
You can also define drill-down functionality and dashboard techniques incorporating various elements like drop-down menus or filters to explore more data and receive valuable insights. Predefining such essential things will allow you to receive full-fledged soluion — an instrument panel optimized and accessible for all the users.
Step 3: Select metrics and KPIs
Once you have passed the stage of defining objectives, the next stage stands for determining key performance indicators — reliable, measurable, tied to your business goals. The key point is in focusing on avoiding overwhelming information and delivering only the key metrics you need for your business.
Most popular categories of metrics.
This tool within dashboards design allows you to track your performance and analyze business efforts so that you decide what metrics are crucial for your objectives — for example, you need to track marketing campaign and decide on the number of leads — no need to put additional KPI indicators.
Select key performance indicators — conversion for a website, revenue, the number of leads or else — and adjust them to the dashboard, you will be fine with just a few critical positions.
Step 4: Design data visualization
Selecting the appropriate way to visualize data will allow you to present data points effectively. Being a graphical representation of marketing or other type of information, dashboards are used to showcase the relationship between variables, convey insights, etc.
Some popular charts to represent data.
You can choose the way to represent information: bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, scatter plots, heatmaps or any other that are appropriate for your business goals. You can also create either static or dynamic visualizations according to your end-users expectations.
In the context of design dashboard, you can choose the way to manipulate data to receive insights you would like to convey. You can implement either number visualization, operating range, line or column chart, ranked list of items, using infographic or else.
Step 5: Optimize for responsiveness
Performing usability testing with representatives of users to gather feedback is essential along with optimizing your dashboard so that people can reach out to this console using their devices — desktops, tablets and smartphones.
Tips for creating an effective responsive dashboard.
Also you have to consider accessibility — incorporating features including alternative text for your visual elements, accessing keyboard shortcuts for keyboard, screen reader compatibility to make the dashboard visible for people with various needs.
This point also includes the process of identifying areas for improvement — iteratively refining dashboard UX design to ensure it meets users’ needs and expectations. You can define opportunities for enhancement by identifying the usage of metrics based on evolving requirements.
Dashboard design best practices
You may be wondering what can improve the dashboard development process since it’s an extremely crucial point in business operations and discovering in-depth insights about how your product or service is performing on the market.
Conducting a rigorous research you are able to unveil the best practices and look at overall tendencies so here are the leading things to pay attention to when designing a dashboard.
Best practices to implement when designing a dashboard.
Implement storytelling
This point refers to KPIs and metrics choosing and therefore you have to tell a story using the data — thereby you effectively represent data using visualization for performance indicators. Storytelling is a powerful tool for conveying complex data into a visually appealing console using real-time data.
Since forward-thinking businesses have to represent their data effectively, storytelling in dashboards design is essential. You have to build a bridge between the presented information and how it will be perceived by end-users, and storytelling is your robust tool.
Here are some indispensable rules for effective storytelling implementation within your control panel:
- Keep it user-oriented. Your main purpose is to deliver insights to users, so envision what your customers are looking for — simple and straightforward storytelling presentation.
- Implement the power of stories. Since it’s a proven fact that people are more likely to remember stories than just facts ensure your facts and insights are resonating with your target audience within dashboard UI design.
- Appeal to emotions. People are more likely to perceive emotional information so ensure to illustrate your data with examples, stories of success or failures etc.
- Balance numbers and story. Remember that first of all you are representing a performance — therefore numbers are crucial but don’t focus too much on them saving a place for a good story that reinforces statistics.
Use visual hierarchy
Since you have to guide end-users’ attention it’s essential to establish a clear visual hierarchy within dashboard UI design. Ensure to arrange visual and text elements — titles, headings, logical order of visual parts, what content is represented.
One of the easiest ways to highlight essential data or elements is to use font size. Another point stands for choosing colors wisely — strategic implementation to highlight key data, keep it not overwhelming and detracting from readability.
Avoid using too many bright colors replacing them with warm ones and also conduct your target audience preferences. Another crucial point is spacing used to organize elements in your control panel and typography — there is a whole research on how people perceive different fonts, sizes of the text etc.
Prioritize readability
Ensure that the design dashboard is conducted according to clear and legible fonts — right font sizes, the visual part is not overcrowded with visual elements and annotations are available and easy to read.
When choosing fonts for dashboard UI design remember to represent your specific style of data, consider your tone of voice, what type of infographic you will be using when designing your dashboard. Don’t be afraid to experiment with fonts and sizes, your goal is to make the text the most visible and readable.
You can use even comic fonts, it’s essential for them to not be the same so that you can style your text and simultaneously not be very different since it will confuse your end-users. Find web-friendly fonts and, based on our experience, it would be perfect to implement two or three different fonts that are interchangeable.
Provide clear context
Whether you are preparing elements for full-fledged data visualization, it’s cool but worth nothing without clear context and insights. Help users to interpret visualized data by adding relevant content, highlighting essential parts of statistics, and you can also enable interactivity.
Implement not only visual part of your UI dashboard design but also incorporate filters for statistics, dropdown menus, various functionalities that allow users to operate your data. Thereby you help users to interpret the provided information filtering out irrelevant data, uncovering deep insights about your solution, etc.
Remember that you are representing a visual display of complex data — consolidate and arrange it within a one or a few screens considering clear context so that users can receive maximum out of your dashboard.
Select the dashboard type according to your needs
Since there is no one-all-fit answer for a type of dashboard that will be perfect for your business, you have to consider your business needs and expectations from using such a console.
Choose among strategic, operational, analytical and tactical using dashboard design inspiration. Each of them is focused on platform-specific analytics, so the receiving user had to be ensured that the information is created according to their needs.
When properly implemented a dashboard can be used for receiving in-depth information about a product or service so ensure that the type reflects what is needed — shorter or longer timeframes, vast or simplified amount of data etc.
We have outlined only the most essential dashboard design best practices remember that it’s an intuitive process powered by checked methods of performing. You can implement one, two, or all practices if it’s needed — the more is better since each of them aims to improve your dashboard.
Summing up
Dashboard UI UX is a user-oriented way to present essential data that covers your business objectives and needs. Using this method you are able to come down to diligent development of dashboards and understanding users’ true desires — clear context, in-depth understanding and insights, etc.
In our detailed guide, we have tapped into what stands for dashboard design, the steps you need to take when creating one and what are the best practices according to your unique business needs.
If you would like to receive a consultation about dashboards, ensure to contact Limeup and we will schedule a complimentary meeting to discuss your expectations. At Limeup, we are experts in crafting user- and web-friendly dashboards that help you to reach your full potential.