Warning! This post is not a tutorial or technical deep dive – it is a reflection of what has helped me improve my dashboarding skills.
1. I Started with Purpose, Not Charts
In the early stage of learning visualization, I’d open Tableau or Power BI and start dragging fields into view without giving much thoughts to it. Spending time with the Data School has helped me learned that starting with a questions or goal is far more effective: Who is the dashboard for? What kind of decision do they need to make? How quickly can they take in the information? What is the key takeaway?
Once I changed my mindset from “build a something” to “solve a problem visually”, my layouts become more coherence and easier to read.
2. I Learned Basic Visual Design Principles
I’m not a graphic designer, but I did got exposed to design elements when doing Landscape Architecture in University. From my experience, you should kept a checklist of basic design principles when first starting out, something like:
- Alignment and spacing to guide the eye
- Limit your color palette to reduce noise
- Group related information together
- Use hierarchy (e.g. font size, boldness) to show importance
- Pay attention to whitespace
- Consistent format (font, size, etc.)
Once I became more intentional with layout and color, my dashboards looked more professional with less effort.
3. Copy and Paste: Study from Real People
Get inspired is key. In fact, I started out by copying dashboards I saw online, especially on sites like Reddit and Tableau Public. For Tableau Public in particular, we can download other user’s dashboards and study from them. I’ve learnt many formatting tricks, custom charts and special “hack” to work around Tableau’s limitations. As I kept experimenting, I gradually developed my own style. Don’t be afraid of borrowing ideas, or straight up copying them cause that is how we learn. It is one of the fastest ways to level up your skills.
Many experienced and well-known Tableau users have their own blogs, which they use to document and share their insight or techniques used in their dashboards.
You should seek feedbacks from others. Post it on reddit, ask people to “roast” your creation, but do be mindful on what to take away, since not all comments are constructive (speaking from experience).
4. Get Feedback, Get Feedback, Get Feedback !
“Whatever is important should be repeated three times.”
5. Practice, Practice and Practice
Start small. Choose simple dataset – one that sparks your interest, and build it out. It is that simple. No need for a fancy business case or huge dataset, that is just going to overwhelmed you. What matters most is I, myself, doing the work, properly.
Try to do something new every times, spice it up and make it fun. Gives yourself a good day or two to work on the dashboard and storytelling, but don’t drag it out for too long. Every projects you work on should teach you something.
If anything, stopped thinking of dashboards as collections of charts and started treating them like stories, that is when you will start having more fun.
Final Thoughts
Improving your dashboard visual skills doesn’t happen overnight. For me, it came from a mix of learning by doing, studying good examples, and really thinking about the user. It’s still a work in progress, but now I enjoy the process — not just the end result.
If you’re just starting out, remember: simple is powerful. And good design doesn’t shout — it guides.
