Data is all around us. I’m sure you’ve heard that said a lot, and it’s true. When you scan items at Tesco, the data is being collected. I don’t mean your personal data, I mean information like what item was bought, when it was bought, what it was bought in combination with, etc. When you get on the train and you tap your Oyster card, data is collected there too so that train lines and stations know what the traffic situation is like and they can provide adequate service to their customers. (For example, my train station only had two trains an hour normally, but from 7:30 to 8:30 we have 5 because they’ve analysed the data and know that there is a demand in the morning for trains.)
Collecting the data is just the beginning, it still needs to be cleaned and analysed. That can be very technical and I’m not going to go into that in this blog. (If you need help with this, contact the data school and we can help 😉)
Once your analysis is done though, it needs to be useful. What’s the point of having data that the decision makers don’t understand?
In comes THE DASHBOARD
A dashboard let’s you bring all that information together and put it in a way that is easily understandable. Unfortunately not everyone gets the dashboard right and so it completely defeats the purpose so here are some top tips/things to remember for your dashboard.
1. The dashboard is not an essay.
I know that it can feel impossible to make a dashboard without explanatory text, and I am not saying that some text isn’t okay or even required. But if you’re writing whole paragraphs…….. People don’t like to read too much. If you see a lot of text, your brain just goes nope, and any information that the dashboard is trying to give is completely ignored. When creating a dashboard remember that it actually needs to be used so try not to scare your audience with text.
2. The charts on the dashboard needs to make sense.
This means that be smart when choosing charts. Not all charts are equal, you have to pick wisely thinking about the data you have, but also your target audience. Having a pie chart with 20 slices shows absolutely nothing for example. Having a dashboard that makes sense also means that your chart needs to be labelled properly. Do you have a title? Do you have an axis? Do you need an axis or should you label the data points? Do you have a legend so people can understand the colour or sizes of points? This is not an exhaustive list but it gives you an idea on what to look out for.
3. The dashboard is meant to tell a story.
Starting from the title, all the way to the bottom, your dashboard should be telling some type of story. Of course the story depends on what the content is and who the dashboard is for so there’s not hard and fast rule I can think of for how a dashboard should tell a story, but there are somethings that should be thought of regardless.
a) What question are you asking and is the dashboard answering that question?
b) What level of granularity/information does your audience need. For example a CEO doesn’t need to know the individual salary amount for all their employees. They may just want to know how much in total of the company’s expenses are to pay staff.
4. The dashboard should be kind on the eyes?
This seems like something minor but the difference it makes is massive. I’m not saying your dashboard needs to be pretty, it means that design choices should be intentional.
a) What colours are you using on your dashboard? Too much colour is very confusing. Some colours clash really badly. If you’re comparing information with colour, are the colours easy to tell apart? Is there consistency with the colours. If you used blue to show location, does that mean blue is always location (ideally yes) it can get very confusing if the same colour is used to represent different things through out the dashboard. Also be aware of colours that are hard to differentiate between if you're colour blind, for example red and green. And lastly, think of the connotations that come with certain colours and the context they are being used in. In a dashboard about romantic films, red may be a good thing whereas a dashboard about the danger of burns, red may be a bad thing because red can mean love and romance and fire and danger and warnings.
b) Are there spaces between the charts. Having charts so close to each other that they look cluttered is not a great idea. Give your charts room to breathe. They, and your audience, will thank you for it.