Dashboard Design, Business Intelligence, Dashboard Interface for Business
In the world of Big Data, the need for business intelligence dashboards is widely understood. Most businesses know that they need a central location to gather and display relevant insights to different users. Well-designed dashboards can take complex data and turn it into useful information, while bad dashboards do just the opposite.
But creating a dashboard that is clear, concise, and easy to understand can be a daunting task. With the application of design principles and best practices, any business can create a business intelligence dashboard that provides an overall view of the health of their business, with an opportunity for user engagement as needed.
Example of a successful business intelligence dashboard
Example of a successful business intelligence dashboard
The design and context of a business intelligence dashboard is crucial for increasing user engagement and understanding. The purpose of a dashboard is twofold; the first is to highlight the most important data, and the second is to provide context for that data. Data alone is difficult to interpret.
By providing context, the data tells a story and starts to make sense to the user — they can find meaning, see opportunities for growth, and identify any potential challenges or obstacles in their business. The design and context together give the user an at-a-glance idea of where things are and where they’re headed.
Example of a business intelligence dashboard with context
Example of a business intelligence dashboard with context
Example of a business intelligence dashboard without context
Example of a business intelligence dashboard without context
Different businesses and industries will require different information displayed on their analytics dashboard. However, some general data sets apply to every business. This data includes the overall budget (year-to-date spending, revenue, and profits), as well as marketing efforts (campaign cost and ROI) and project management (planned vs. completed work).
To determine what you should include in a specific dashboard, identify the current opportunities and obstacles facing your business, design a rough prototype, and refine with user research. Consider searching for visual examples within your industry.
Avoid Over-Designing
When creating a dashboard, it can be tempting to overwhelm the page with lots of different colors, fonts, and graphics. However, clean and simple design with limited pops of color and simple data visualizations is all you need to inform and inspire your user.
Example of an over-designed business intelligence dashboard
Example of an over-designed business intelligence dashboard
Business intelligence dashboards are an effective way to provide business executives with the vital data driving their business. A thoughtfully-designed dashboard, based on design principles and best practices will bring context to that data, tell a story, and help the user find meaning and draw conclusions. For modern businesses, there is no greater value than a business intelligence dashboard that makes analysis and decision-making easy, and consequently gives the decision-maker a new level of confidence—something we all could use a little more of in our daily work and personal lives.