Designing Dashboards and Best Practices for Visualizations

Now, we will delve into the essential principles and best practices of data visualization, focusing specifically on dashboard design. By exploring how to present data in a visually compelling and informative manner, you will gain the knowledge and learn techniques that will help to create impactful dashboards to effectively communicate insights, drive decision-making, and engage your audience. This chapter was influenced by some giants in data visualization: The Functional Art by Alberto Cairo, Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few, The Big Book of Dashboards by Steve Wexley, Jeffrey Shaffer, and Andy Cotgraeve, Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, and Jill Butler, Data Story by Nancy Duarte, and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Visualization design theory
• Formatting rules
• Color...

Visualization design theory

Your visualization thought process should always begin with the basics of design from the lowest level. In other words, we will start talking about the worksheets displayed on dashboards and ensure that those worksheets are well designed.

Therefore, our discussion will begin with a consideration of visualization design principles, such as the following collection, which is inspired by the 7 principles of design: https://www.turing.com/kb/what-are-the-7-principles-of-design-detailed-breakdown:

• Emphasize what is most important
• Amplify important data points
• Align and balance elements with appropriate use of color, size, and texture
• Use contrast to highlight elements or groups
• Limit the use of colors or fonts to three to increase brand identity and keep control
• Use human-user friendly proportions, like the golden cut
• Keep the user’s eye moving in a Z line
• Use lines for benchmarks or thresholds...

Formatting rules

The following formatting rules encompass fonts, lines, and bands. Fonts are, of course, an obvious formatting consideration. Lines and bands, however, may not be something you typically work with—but in Tableau, lines and bands should certainly be considered. This illustrates that data visualization is closely related to graphic design, where lines and bands play a much bigger role than they do in, for example, Excel, and that formatting considers much more than just the textual layout.

Keep the font choice simple

Typically, using one or two fonts on a dashboard is advisable. More fonts can create a confusing environment and interfere with readability.

Fonts chosen for titles should be thick and solid, while body fonts should be easy to read. In Tableau, choosing appropriate fonts is simple: select Format | Font to display the Format Font window to see and choose the fonts you like.

The Tableau fonts always work, like Tableau Bold, Tableau...

Color rules

It seems slightly ironic to discuss color rules in a book that will be printed in black and white (to download the color images, look here: https://packt.link/TybKH. Of course, that may not be true if you are reading this book on an electronic device). Nevertheless, even in a monochromatic setting, a discussion of color is relevant. For example, the exclusive use of black text communicates something different compared to using variations of gray. The following list of color rules should be helpful to ensure that you use colors effectively in a variety of settings.

Keep colors simple and limited

Stick to the basic hues and provide only a few (perhaps three to five) hue variations. In his book The Functional Art: An Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization, Alberto Cairo provides insight as to why this is important:

The limited capacity of our visual working memory helps explain why it’s not advisable to use more than four or five...

Visualization type rules

This section deserves a whole separate book and is interlinked with many other disciplines like storytelling, communication, and persuasion; as such, we won’t take the time here to delve into a lengthy list of visualization-type rules but, rather, highlight a few frequently discussed ones. We will consider keeping simple shapes versus complex ones and the effective use of pie charts.

Keep shapes simple

Too many shape details impede comprehension. This is because shape details draw the user’s focus away from the data. Consider the following exercise using two different shopping cart images.

Let’s look at the following exercise steps:

1. Open the workbook associated with this chapter and navigate to the Simple Shopping Cart worksheet. Note that the visualization is a scatter plot that shows the top-10-selling subcategories in terms of total sales and profits.
2. Navigate to the Shapes directory located in the My Tableau...

Keep visualizations simple

Some people tire of seeing the same chart types over and over. This leads to requests such as, can we spice up the dashboard a bit? Normally, such sentiments should be resisted. As stated at the beginning of this chapter, introducing variety for its own sake is counterproductive. Nevertheless, there are times when a less common visualization type may be a better choice than a more popular type. When are those times?

Use less common chart types in the following scenarios:

• The chart is used to catch the end user’s attention.
• The chart type presents the data more effectively.

Sometimes, a less common chart type can be effectively used to catch the end user’s attention for some goal, such as humor, making a salient point, or making the visualization more memorable. One such example can be found on the Tableau 404 error page. Navigate to http://www.tableau.com/asdf and observe Bigfoot in a packed bubble chart. Note...

Dashboard design

Now that we have completed our discussion of visualization theory, let’s turn our attention to dashboard design. We’ll begin by asking the question, what is a dashboard? This is rather difficult to answer; however, its usage in everyday conversation in many organizations would suggest that people have a definite idea as to what a dashboard is. Furthermore, search engine results provide no shortage of definitions. But those definitions can differ significantly and even be contradictory.

Why is it so difficult to define a dashboard? In part, it is because data visualization as a whole, and dashboarding specifically, is an emerging field that combines many other disciplines. These disciplines include statistical analysis, graphic and web design, computer science, and even journalism. An emerging field with so many components is a moving target and, as such, is difficult to define.

For our purposes, we will begin with Stephen Few’s definition...

Dashboard best practices

Visualization best practices are not limited to visual features; actions, filters, and organizing data can be just as important. A few of those features that Tableau has to offer shall be mentioned in this section. Each of them will help you to either improve the user experience or keep track of what you have built—since, sometimes, you can get lost when working with many different worksheets.

We will start by discussing six different types of Actions, followed by the Download and Navigation Object, then the Used In feature, and lastly, the Item Hierarchy. All contribute to a better dashboard-building experience. Let’s start!

Actions

Implicitly, we have discussed this a few times before, but let’s have an explicit look at what we can achieve with regard to visualization and dashboard design by using Actions. Actions come into play if you want your user to be redirected by clicking or hovering on data in a visualization. This...

Summary

We began this chapter by considering visualization design theory. We looked at formatting rules, color rules, and rules about which visualization types to use and which we need to avoid. We also explored how to compromise when contradictory design goals are expressed by end users. Then, we discussed dashboard design principles. We covered three popular layouts: the Golden Rectangle, quad, and small multiple.

Afterward, we looked at how to use sheet selection techniques as an ally in good design. Specifically, we explored how to allow the end user to choose which visualization type to view, and how to hide and display filters so as to make the best use of screen real estate. Next, we discussed actions and download buttons for a better user experience, as well as item hierarchies and the Used In feature, which is very handy for organizing your dashboard. This, in turn, will help to improve the layout design. Finally, to combine everything we learned, we analyzed three Makeover...