This past week I was lucky enough to be challenged to build a mobile dashboard for a client. As excited as I was for this new challenge, I realized I didn't know where to start. If you do a search on building out mobile dashboards there are very few resources. I wanted to share all of the things I've learned throughout the process.
Top 5 Things I Learned:
- Sketch out a dashboard.
- Think of mobile friendly charts.
- Use tooltips to your advantage.
- Filters /Parameters/ Dates should be displayed at the top.
- Have filters with apply buttons.
Sketch Out Dashboards
No matter what platform you are using it is always important to sketch out an idea of what your dashboard will look like. I found this even more important than working on a normal sized dashboard. The main reason is that you are now extremely limited by space. As discussed later on it's also important to know where things can be placed for user accessibility. For this project I used Excalidraw to help design the top portion.
Mobile Friendly Charts
Due to the sizing limitations of a mobile dashboard your chart choices are even more important. On a computer it's easier to scroll through a dashboard but on a mobile device it can become frustrating moving left and right as well as up and down. I have found that bars, tables, and line charts work best when space is limited. Something to look out for no matter what chart choice you go with is how much information is being displayed as the charts can become cramped.
Tooltips
Tooltips can be extremely helpful, but on most dashboards they become a bit redundant. However, this isn't the case with mobile dashboards as they give you more real estate. I never focused more on tooltips than while working with a mobile dashboard. This is because I couldn't share all the information I wanted/needed in one view. By using tooltips I was able to clean up the view by focusing on the most important information and having the tooltip show secondary information.
Display Controls at The Top
When building a normal dashboard you can display filters, parameter actions, and dates anywhere in your dashboard as the user is able to interact with the dashboard as they follow the story. This isn't the case with mobile dashboards purely because of space. I found that having all of these interactive elements on the top of the dashboards proved more beneficial for the user. Having these controls at the top help the viewer dictate what they will be seeing.
Filters with Apply Buttons
Nothing is more painful than having a dashboard load during every filter change. A great way to bypass this load is to add apply buttons to all filters. By adding an apply button to your filters the load won't take place until you click apply.