As a data analyst or data scientist, one
of your core duty might be to build BI
dashboards in tools such as PowerBi and
Tableau. Your stakeholders would love to
see dashboards which are simple yet
effective and visually pleasing.
Knowing design principles of building
highly effective dashboards will help
you a lot in your data analyst and data
scientist career. This is similar to you
hiring an interior designer for your
home, so that they help you with
furniture, the color of walls and windows
and all kind of props that you can put
inside the home, so that your experience
of living in a home becomes very
pleasant. We are going to cover such 15
design principles in this video. The
videos directly taken from
our course PowerBI data analytics
course on codebasics.io
We are now going to go over 15 design
principles behind
you know creating a beautiful looking
PowerBI dashboard, and these are
designed by the folks at sql.bi. They
also have a paid course on the report
design. So, if you are interested, go check
it out, the website is
sql.bi Let's go over these rules one
by one. The first one is designing for a
target. You should have a clear goal for
your dashboard and not try to mix
a lot of things in
one page. We created four different pages,
each dedicated to a specific goal or a
team. So sales view is going to be mainly
used by sales team. Supply chain is going
to be used mainly by supply chain team
to do analysis on the whole supply chain.
Sometimes people
create
big
report
with no clearly defined goals. So maybe
instead of four pages let's say if you
just create one page and try to stuff
everything in, that's not gonna look. So
that's
principle number one. The second one is
keep everything at a glance.
Try not to have scroll bar. See in this
visual, I have a scroll bar, so some of
the rows are not visible. Some of the
columns are also not clearly visible. See
all this number 9738, I have to scroll.
Instead of that if you have
no scroll bar, I know in some situation
is not possible. But if it's possible try
to avoid scroll bar.
Designer reports are that in a glance you
get all the information.
Keep it simple obviously, don't try to
over complicate it, don't try to have too
many dashboards, too many numbers. People
get confused. The whole reason you are
doing PowerBI dashboarding is to give
quick insights and consumable insights.
The fourth one is obviously,
align the elements. For example here, see
you you look at this line the elements
are not, they're like up and down. Also
the vertical spaces between vertical
spacing between these two,
is more than what we have between these
two.
If you have a uniform symmetric design,
of course it's gonna please your eyes.
You know how you can make your users
really happy.
Be consistent.
Here in this
report, look at the middle column. My
numbers are left aligned, whereas in
remaining columns my numbers are right
align. So, if you have everything right
align, it looks better. So, be consistent
in terms of
your alignments, visual principles. It's
not like I have financed few in a blue
background and then sales few in a
dark
background. You know like dark purple
background, don't do that.
Also in terms of your abbreviations,
let's say I'm using BM for benchmark at
one point, another
point you are using BEN for
benchmark. Doesn't look good. Be
consistent in your color, your alignment,
your abbreviations,
things like that.
Highlight the most relevant information.
Sometimes you have a visual where you
want to find out the most problematic
customer, maybe highlight that somehow.
Be clear.
Here I'm using
let's say BM
as a
as an abbreviation. So, if I don't have
footer note like this, bm is benchmark,
ly is last year, then you know sometimes
people don't know. I mean sometimes you
feel like, "oh this is a very obvious
abbreviation users would know." But
you'll be surprised, sometimes the most
obvious abbreviation, people have no idea
about.
If you have this kind of footer at the
bottom which
you know which expands the meaning of it,
that's gonna be better. Start from zero
if possible. I'm not saying all the time.
For example, here in this chart,
I have let's say revenue, revenue from
let's say 2021, and revenue from 2022.
This chart the y-axis is starting from
70 70 million dollar.
So, let's say in my
2021, my revenue for the business was 71
million.
Second year it was 75. Now when I look at
this bar chart, it looks like a big
growth. You see the first bar is so tiny,
the second one is very big. It looks, "oh I
achieved a lot of growth." But actually
when you start this axis from zero,
see here it starts from zero,
actually it's not that much growth,
okay.
I mean not as much growth as it looks
here on the left hand side.
So, if you have started everything from
zero,
you get right picture. Sometimes these
sales people, marketing people, to impress
their management, they use this kind of
tricky charts.
So you have to be uh clear about this.
Always shorten the numbers. Let's say, I
have this chart right, like this look
look at this number,
it's so big hard to consume 3 7 3 6 k
like what does it mean, and all these
numbers in the in this column.
But if you have
these these are like problematic columns,
but if you have this kind of thing
3.74 billion, I I get an idea. Here the
numbers are in millions, in the middle. So
use millions millions that kind of
uh
abbreviation. Then show the context.
Sometimes,
when you're looking at the performance
of your business, it makes sense that you
compare it against last year or you
compare it with your targets.
So here in this
you know at the top, I have versus ly
versus target. So, I'm comparing with last
year.
So,
in this particular table see BM means
benchmark, which is last year. So, I have
current year, then last year, then the
change and percentage in. Similarly, in
this line chart, I have
current year and vs
BM means benchmark. So, I have another
chart with
my
last year. So, when I compare it with last
year,
I get a good idea. If I look at the
number of the current year, I might say,
"Oh I'm seeing a lot of growth!" But
compared to last year it might not be
that much growth. So, that that's what it
means, when I say show the context.
Choose the right colors. Of course,
when say,
in this particular KPI indicator last
year
net sales for 3.81,
but this year 3.74. So, it's a decline of
negative 1.86 percent, so red.
The red is generally used to show
decline. Green is used to show it up. Here,
my net profit was negative minus 14, but
now it's minus 13.98. So, I'm I'm losing
less money than compare compared to less
last year.
So use green.
There are some color blind people, and
you need to study the principles of
you know how do you use right colors for
the folks who are color blind? They see
the world differently.
Then design dashboard not reports. We
already talked about difference between
dashboard and a report. It's kind of weird
that, in PowerBI we call the whole file
a report. Actually, it's a
dashboard or bunch of dashboards.
You need to design
dashboards, so that
the user gets a quick insight. Don't give
him
a table with thousand rows. You are just
giving a report, and you are asking that
user to figure things out. You know they
hired you as a data analyst, so that you
can use PowerBI, Tableau to give the
quick insights.
Show variations. We already talked about
those line charts, right. When you have a
line charts, you show the variation. You
get
an idea of how things are going or how
things are trending.
Leave the noise off. This is like a
general principle.
In your chart,
just observe things carefully. Whatever
visual or a number is not useful, just
leave it.
You might think, "oh but there is an extra
additional number, it doesn't hurt."
Actually it hurts, because it's creating
a clutter.
Simplicity is the best thing. Just remove
the noise as much as you can.
Pick the right charts. You know for every
purpose there is
a right chart for it. For example
at the top what I am seeing is the same
chart right. At the top I am seeing bar
chart, bottom I am seeing the line chart.
But at the top, see in every year, I am
comparing that year's numbers, versus my
benchmark. Benchmark could be last year
or a target, correct.
Target means, let's say they give you you
know sales target things like that.
So,
for doing per year comparison or per
month here,
this barchart is good. But if I look at the
trend,
if I want to see the trend, then this
chart is better, line chart is better. So,
for every purpose there is a right chart.
So, keep all this 15 design principle in
in your
mind, whenever you are working on any
type of report. In the description below
we are going to
give you a link of all the 15 design
principle. Again the source credit goes
to sql.bi goes. BI folks check their
website they are doing amazing work. And
thanks for that visual they gave a
permission to use that visual uh in our
uh course.
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