The Logic of Dashboards: Designing for the Whole Picture

I love going to open houses and seeing how homes are laid out. Some houses are brilliantly logical. They have the coat closet in the right place, the counters make sense, and the spot for the toaster helps you hide some of the crumbs. Others just seem to highlight the worst in how we live – they not only put all the crumbs in the light, but make them visible from nearly every angle of the house it seems. We recognize this almost immediately. We sense it when buying homes, knowing how we live and how that might play out in spaces.

When I teach dashboard design, I leverage some of this with a little game called “Describe the room.” Here, give it a go.

So, now that you’ve thought about how you’d describe it, what did you mention first? Next? Did you have an order?

Anecdotally, English speakers often start by telling me there’s a wooden table. Fewer start with the window, but both table and window seem to be the main starting points. From there, we go to chairs, painting, and so forth. Usually at end, people surmise what this room is for. Contrast that to native American Sign Language users. They tell it’s a meeting room first and then work their way around the space. Why? Because ASL has grammatical rules for how to describe space. It provides a logical framework for how to convey (and understand) space.

Besides language trivia, this exercise also gets people thinking about how to explain specific things they see to someone without the visual. The more we practice, the more we find what’s effective. Anyone who has ever done technical support knows to break standard grammar and start with, “At the top of the screen in the menu bar, you’ll see X. Click that. Now…”

Dashboards also require this. Sure, we’ve looked at the data and gone through a whole process to put together something. We see the whole picture. But, we have to provide context to those who don’t.

How do we do this?

Set the tone

What is this dashboard about? Sure, smart titles will help, but what other aids support understanding? Does it make sense to highlight the process with icons? Should there be a graphic? What do the colors need to convey? How does the whole support the parts?

Are these both futuristic dashboards or does one feel more modern than the other? Tone helps define what we can expect. It’s the same as telling people this is a meeting room.

Large to small

Typical dashboards have a main question they attempt to answer. It could be sales, profit, or how HR efforts are going.

If we take a more standard approach to our HR dashboard, it might look a bit more like this. We’re answering questions around retention, feedback, and academic backgrounds. We’re interested in parts-to-whole comparisons, while getting more explicit data around the exact numbers of pieces.

By starting with retention, we can compare differences. Who leaves versus who stays? Does travel have anything to do with it? What about schooling? Are there demographic differences?

This is the same idea of calling out the table. The table in the room matters. As does our first chart series.

Focus on a single question

In writing, this would be called having a thesis. You want one main idea to help drive your dashboard. Sure, sub-ideas will support, but there’s going to be an overarching question.

This is hard. As analysts, we take a journey through chart-land. We explore the data, feel as if we have a good hold on the information, and put together our ideas of how to express what we found. Think on that – we’re in the picture.

Part of this requires re-examining our finished product. Does it tell others what we think it says? Is the understanding from it what we hoped?

Think beyond the chart

Is it the table that makes the meeting room or do all the parts work together to tell you what the room is? Take away the chairs. Is that a place you’d want to meet?

We often build our charts in isolation of each other. We spend a lot of time with them. But, it’s our charts working together that make a dashboard.

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How many parts are in this dashboard? Some people feel like there’s about 5 sections to this viz, but there’s 8 total charts and a legend. Some pieces work together. Others work best apart.

Part of what makes this set of dashboards work are the cues about layout with visual containers. Icons help call out pieces and color highlights items that relate.

By working together, we create unity and a whole picture. We encourage interaction and let our end users play like we did. If we follow a pattern and show our logic, we help others follow better.