In the first part of this blog, I’ve covered the three tips for designing dashboards, including simplifying our use of colour, using the right charts and using minimal formatting methods. In this second part, I’ll cover the other two tips.
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Remember to format TOOLTIPS
Tooltips are details that appear when you rest the pointer over one or more marks in the view. We can take advantage of the tooltips and give the data context by writing a sentence with tooltips. By doing this, when users hover over the visualization with their mouse, they’ll see the sentences in little pop-up boxes, like this one:
Formatting tooltips is another tip that can make your dashboard more user-friendly and give it some wow points. You can format the tooltip in many ways and add extra fields that are not in the visualization. Think of the tooltip as a supporting analysis for your Viz. Also try the viz in tooltip feature which you can make some cool things with.
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Don’t try to answer too many questions with a single dashboard
When we have too many questions to solve, we try to squeeze in as many charts and graphs as possible in a single dashboard just because we can. By doing this, we provided a highly detailed, real-time dashboard that covers every business challenge and offers users many drill-down options.
However, the viewers will find it hard to find the information they are looking for as too many charts are out there. The best practice is to keep the charts’ focus on a specific theme. For example, if we are building an employee turnover rate dashboard, then focus on the employee data and keep the scope of the dashboard tight. Also, we can always create new dashboards for other scopes. Using only the minimum charts needed will help your dashboards be adopted and utilized by the intended audience.
Example: London City dashboard attempts to present far too much information in a small space and has ended up looking extremely cluttered
Example: Sales dashboard keeps the scope of the dashboard tight with minimum charts
Conclusion:
In short, a good dashboard needs to be clear, intuitive, and user-friendly. To achieve that, we should simplify our use of colour, using the right charts, use minimal formatting methods and keep the scope of our dashboards tight.
I hope this was useful for you. Thanks for reading through.
Author: Zoe Lu
Zoe is a graduate of the University of Queensland, majoring in professional accounting and applied finance, she always strives to learn and enjoys applying her skills to manage any challenge. She moved from Brisbane to Melbourne three years ago and she believes that all change is good change. When Zoe is not creating dashboards, you will see her at Pilates or enjoying the good restaurants around Melbourne with her family and friends. If you ever get a chance to eat hot pot with her, she will share the recipe for her delicious secret dipping sauce.