Certain design features should be avoided to improve the meaningfulness of a dashboards. Here are some of the good and bad practices.
Design features that make dashboards more meaningful are:
- using the available space ergonomically and considerably,
- presenting the extract of raw data as summaries,
- avoiding visual graphics when they don’t add any value, in particular circular diagrammatic representations
- avoiding any optical illusions that can distort the way data is interpreted by readers
- connecting data that is related,
- proper spatial arrangement with the most relevant information in the top, and top left corner, the least relevant information in the bottom right
- avoiding display of data to fill up white space, it’s better to leave it blanc
Design features, that can break dashboards are:
- Inappropriate use of space
- Forcing users to interact with the dashboard and scroll
- Inclusion of graphics for purely decorative purposes
- Not providing summaries
- Forcing users to cognitive tasks such as calculating values, or wading through data
- Not structuring the content
- Not using the appropriate display
- Including data that is unnecessary, meaningless, and adds no value
- Use of color that is assigned randomly and unsystematic across various displays
- Use of too much color
- Including diagrammatic representations that can lead to optical illusions such as the Delboef illusion
