My Top 3 tips to reduce the visual burden on your dashboard

In this article, I would like to share with you the three main tips I use to reduce the visual burden on users, and which I use most often when coaching dashboard designers.

Identifying the core issue

In so many instances, dashboards progressively grow complex. This complexity may arise from:

• Overly broad scope, leading to a single dashboard for too many different needs
• User-initiated evolution requests are executed without prior validation
• Frequent changes in approach due to developer turnover
• Influence from internal politics or company pressure
• Blindly migrating existing dashboard from old tools

The 4 Key Consequences

1.  Products: The outcome is overly complex dashboards, whether in terms of data utilization, performance, or layout. This complexity interferes with usability, decision-making, and consequently, the adoption of the dashboard.

2. Costs: Dashboards require extensive development time. Redesigns become frequent, leading to escalating costs. What was initially estimated at $30K may now exceed $90K.

3. Users: Users start to lose faith in the company's data strategy. They invest time in the design process only to see delayed or disappointing dashboard results.

4. Data Teams: Data analysts, BI engineers, and Data engineers begin to lose sight of their roles' significance within the company.

My Top 3 tips in this situation:

• Treat your dashboards as real products => They're much more than a spreadsheet report
• Embrace a minimalist approach and stick to best practices in Data Visualization 
• Involve stakeholders and end users as early as possible in the dashboard design process

And remember:

- -

If you want to learn how to apply design and cognitive principles to your dashboards and reports, join my new training "Learn Design Driven Data Visualization".