What attracts a user when they see a dashboard? It is the simplification and beautification of the data represented on the screen. An attractive dashboard layout design requires careful consideration for the audience throughout its design.

Well-designed dashboards use data in a very well-defined manner that catches the eye of a specific audience. There are various ways to reach out to the targeted users.

In this blog, we describe several techniques that users can implement to beautify their dashboards that look good and cover all the information in a very strategic and hierarchal manner.

What is a Dashboard?

A dashboard is a visual panel used as a business tool that conveys information to be viewed by various kinds of users. It allows professionals to perform business-related tasks like collecting intel, also known as Business Intelligence, analyzing data, and displaying the results of the insights collected.

Types of Dashboards

One of the important considerations to be kept in mind while creating a dashboard design is to choose the type of dashboard layout that has to be created, as every kind is mended to reach out to a particular kind of spectator who is vigilant for the same information. This aspect of choosing the most suitable dashboard assists a client in applying the analytics of their organization’s insights to plan out their business targets.

Given below are the majorly applied types of dashboard designs for your reference:

Strategical Dashboard:

Strategical dashboards analyze long-term company strategies by carefully observing trends and patterns. These focused dashboards follow the current market scenarios and, therefore, are quite complex to generate. Major MNCs use these dashboard types to determine their strategies for their future growth.

Executive Dashboard:

Executive dashboards majorly let their clients access the Key Performing Indicators (KPIs) to analyze the real-time driven market trends that can assist an organization in carefully examining their strategies. Similar to Strategical Dashboards, they also focus on longstanding plans instead of short and immediate actions.

Operational Dashboard:

Unlike Executive Dashboards, Operational dashboards assist in analyzing small and immediate business trends. Moreover, these dashboards are generally operated by junior levels of management as they keenly monitor the operational processes. These dashboards are currently very high in demand as they provide rapid and accurate data from the insights.

Tactical Dashboard:

Tactical dashboards are one of the best-suited dashboards for developing mid-tier businesses as they help their clients to achieve particular or time-oriented goals. Users should be able to click on the dashboard to quickly and easily drill into the data on the dashboard itself to explore problems and opportunities.

These dashboards are filled with resourceful information which assists in nurturing growth by providing hidden patterns and tactical strategies monitoring the current strengths, flaws, and trends across all the segments.

Design Suggestions for an Exemplary Dashboard

Mentioned below are quite a few recommended tips for designing a very effective dashboard:

Basic formatting for a layout design:

Page formatting refers to setting up a page resolution and designing a background, alignments, captions, and write-ups. One of the most important aspects of a good layout design is to have a decent page resolution or page size which is pleasing to the eyes. Usually, the standardized page resolution of a page report format is 1280 by 720. This resolution is perfectly applicable to most of the scenarios. Also, apply this setup to almost every page to not look weird.

Apart from the default 1280x720 resolution, customizing it at a slightly higher or lower also works fine because it depends on the pieces of information that a user wants to add.

After setting up an appropriate page resolution, the next task is to create a background or a template. The background is needed to add a contextual part to your dashboard design. Moreover, choosing the right colors for it makes it more creative. Therefore, carefully designing a background relevant to the aimed topic is very important.

All now left is to add the content is customize it with alignments. If the dashboard page is welcoming, it must have catchy titles to attract the viewers' eyes curiously. Report pages must have the data contained in the same font with suitable headings or captions to make them look more professional.

Visualizing data with shapes and images:

Visualizing data with appropriate shapes and images directs every user in the right direction by conveying all the information required. They assist them in understanding the data more clearly rather than distracting away if only displayed correctly. Adding unnecessary images or shapes would only make the content look too complex, creating a negative impact on the organization’s dashboard. Like always, precaution is better than a cure!

Determining dashboard goals:

Targeting the right audience is one of the most crucial dashboard goals many businesses aim to achieve. Additionally, the goals set by an organization with the planned strategies are supposed to be displayed accurately and in a well-defined manner. Big targets can be scattered into smaller objectives as it would provide a clear and definitive idea of the execution of the plan.

Not to overcrowd the dashboard:

The next technique for designing a good dashboard design is based on the information or content provided. Inserting all the data on a single page leads to an undesirable effect on the users. Likewise to the images, the data provided on every page should be precise and relevant to impress the audience viewing it. Any other information only leads to confusion and chaos.

Conclusion

All the important techniques that make a dashboard design unique and look good have been discussed above. Overall, every dashboard should aim to convey the information sought by professionals and other viewers with the intent of saving time. Although every dashboard marks different objectives, the design principles above-mentioned are enough to reach their respective audience.

Dashboards are very tedious to make, especially when someone is new to designing dashboards. Do check out the way more user-friendly and unique dashboards available at Kockpit .

Kockpit is a subsidiary company of Team Computers that provides Microsoft Power Bi consulting services and ETL solutions to various companies on-premise and cloud. They analyze data with Microsoft Power Bi and deliver real-time insights for every business activity. They offer various Power BI data analytics, visualization services, and products based on AI and big data.