Business Intelligence Dashboard Design

Designing the perfect dashboard is more than just dropping a few charts onto a workspace. Proper dashboard design requires appropriate placement, knowledge of your data, and maybe a bit of color theory.

Placement

There are a few elements to consider when it comes to placement. Firstly, what do you want in your dashboard? It's important to only focus on important matters when creating a dashboard. Avoid placing too much detail or anything that could distract from the data at hand.
Users eyes should be immediately drawn to the most important element of you dashboard. Research has shown that the top left quadrant of a screen is the most commonly looked at space, providing nothing else on the dashboard stands out more than it should. Place your most important data there to ensure it is seen by viewers.

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Knowing your data

It is imperative that you are familiar with the data you are working with. One of the most common pitfalls of dashboard design is choosing the wrong medium to display data. More often than not, a simple bar chart will accurately display information. People like to get fancy, however, and use 3d-pie charts which, in reality, do nothing but confuse viewers and obfuscate data. Dashboards are about speed and this is completely counterproductive.

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Color Theory

Color is a very simple, yet very effective tool for dashboards. With proper understanding, it can emphasize and accentuate a dashboard; without proper understanding, it can destroy one.

The first thing to note is that color is very powerful when it's absent. Grayscale has the potential to enhance a dashboard just as much as full color palettes.

If a full color display is the way you decide to go, pay attention to a few things, as the colors you choose say a lot. Red and green, for example, are associated with good and bad. You could really confuse someone if you create a graph with a downward trending line colored green.