Good data, great dashboards

Are you seeing the value in your data?

In this series the team at White Box takes a look at visualisation best practice, covering all manner of dashboarding techniques to optimise your reporting tools.

Want to see more tips? Check them out here.

Sometimes you can find yourself lacking for inspiration with a dashboard. It just isn’t bouncing off the page the way you want it to, and you know this series of similar looking charts is going to look underwhelming to your stakeholders.

So you think, here’s the solution – mix it up a bit!

But there’s plenty wrong in this picture.

We’ve gone from a consistent, disciplined (and yes, boring, but more on that in a moment) approach, to the wild west. Each visual is the same at its core, a simple aggregation of a measure broken down by a certain attribute. Why then would we present each one differently?

• One vertical and one horizontal bar chart

• Attribute 1 presented as a bar and a donut

• Equivalent attributes taking on different colours on adjacent charts

There is a multitude of charts on offer in Power BI, Tableau and other visualisation tools, so the temptation is there to leap in and use as many as possible. It’s akin to a child playing with all their toys at once though, and that isn’t going to engage your end users.

So we’re stuck with the boring original then? No, whilst at least professional, the original isn’t much to connect with either.

Instead look for things that truly tell a story and guide the viewer towards it without compromising on discipline. In consultation with your users, some simple changes can create a more engaging display while conveying a deeper message, for example:

• The first chart can be shown in descending order giving a clear view of the leading attribute, reinforced with a colour gradient.

• The binary attribute is the better candidate for a donut; perhaps the thing of interest is to see the clearly dominant attribute rather than their specific magnitude.

• The third can show the variance of each attribute’s average to the overall average. Let’s assume you discovered that this was the user’s real concern; typically they exported data and did their own calculations, now you’ve saved them the trouble.

We specialise in data visualisation at White Box

We can illuminate your data so that you can make the right, unbiased decisions for your organisation.

As your partner in data visualisation - Power BI, Tableau, Qlik, Looker and more - we’ll help you see the full potential of your data and maximise your business success through advanced and innovative solutions that make all the difference.

Get in touch today for your free data strategy consultation.