Forum Discussion
First Report
Hi Jishan17
For a first pass, I think this is okay. Thank you for sharing with the community your very first report! It takes a lot of courage to post and ask the community for feedback!
Some basic things I would consider...
Who is your intended audience(s) for? This should be the first thought when building any new report / dashboard. What information are you attempting to share/portray to your audience? For me, the information or data you're sharing should almost be like telling a story...
Here's a great article on telling effective stories with your data: https://www.datacamp.com/blog/telling-effective-data-stories-with-data-narrative-and-visuals
Next, if we're only focusing on UI/UX.... here are my initial feedback:
- margins should be evenly spaced with pixels divisible by 4 or 8
- visuals should be evenly spaced across. Use a grid system
- blue background on visuals are a little too distracting and takes away focus from the information being shown. Should soften it with a light gray or even white. The current use of color is causes confusion and leads to misinterpretation of data.
- Visuals are too sharp. Think about adding a softer rounded border corner for your visuals.
- For your card KPIs, if you do not need decimals, remove them as they're also distracting. Round to whole numbers.
- From your top 4 KPIs, it's hard to determine which one is the most important. I typically read left to right and from top to bottom in what we call an "F" pattern visual hierarchy. I'm assuming Sales is more important than Net Income, but understanding a bit of Finance, perhaps Net Income is actually what I'm most interested in seeing. In any case, which ever is the most important should also be slightly bigger than the others. By having all the same size, this would typically mean that all the KPIs are equally as important (not one over the other).
- Avoid using true colors (white, black, red, orange, yellow, blue, etc.)
- Your product line visual has no aggregate data, I would remove it.
- Remove unneccessary visual elements such as Y-axis labels and titles. There's something call the "ink-to-data" ratio that you can read to give you a better understanding: https://deliveringdataanalytics.com/the-data-to-ink-ratio-chart-makeover/
- I would add back some values back to the visual. In your visuals, you're currently asking me to guess and understand the actual value of each plotted value. That's very memory intensive for us humans. Spoon-feed the information.
I could probably go on further but I'll stop here. Some final words... there are some additional design principles that I want you to research:- Gestalt Principles
- Hick's Law
If you can apply all of these, you would have an amazing dashboard! Keep up the good work!
Hi Jishan17
There's slight improvements but honestly, not by much... At the moment, it is just too busy with too much distractions and it's hard to consume and understand the data.
Let's use your same data but design it differently. As an example, I'll create the wireframe and you attempt to recreate it in Power BI:
As part of your excercise, you should be concious of the design principals previously shared in my other post.
Hi Jishan17 ,
first thanks for sharing your report with the community π to be honest my first report looks similar to yours π but 8 years later I have some advice for you, how to improve your report and take it to the next level:
Consistent Visual Design: Ensure that all charts and data visualizations follow a consistent color scheme and design style. This helps in maintaining visual coherence across the dashboard, making it easier for users to interpret the data.
Clarify Chart Titles and Labels: Some charts could benefit from more descriptive titles and labels. For example, the 'Payment Mode' chart could specify what the bars represent (e.g., "Number of Transactions by Payment Mode"). This adds clarity to what each visualization represents without needing additional context.
Axis Titles and Units: Ensure all charts have clear axis titles and that units are specified where necessary. This includes adding units to the Sales Trend chart and clarifying what the numbers represent (e.g., total sales in dollars).
Improve Readability of Tables: The customer type table is hard to read. Consider formatting changes such as increasing font size, adding row and column borders, or using zebra stripes to improve readability.
Use of Space: Some charts, like the 'Average Rating' line graph, appear compressed. Adjusting the spacing or layout of the dashboard can help ensure each chart has enough space to be easily readable.
Interactive Elements: If the platform supports it, consider adding interactive elements like tooltips, drill-downs, or filters. This allows users to explore the data in more depth directly from the dashboard.
Dashboard Navigation: If the dashboard has multiple pages or sections, ensure there is a clear navigation system so users can easily find different views or datasets.
Legends and Key: Add legends or a key where necessary, especially for charts where itβs not immediately clear what different colors or shapes represent.
Trend Lines and Predictive Analytics: If relevant, consider adding trend lines or predictive analytics to historical data charts like the 'Sales Trend' to provide forecasts or insights into future trends.
Actionable Insights: Include a section or annotations that suggest actionable insights based on the data presented. This could be in the form of text boxes highlighting key performance issues or opportunities.
I hope this will help you π
Have a nice weekend!
Best,
Kathrin
After going thourgh your feedback, i did tried to work on a different dataset.
please find the below with a dffierent dataset and let me know if it is better
Regards,
Jishan
Hi Jishan17
There's slight improvements but honestly, not by much... At the moment, it is just too busy with too much distractions and it's hard to consume and understand the data.
Let's use your same data but design it differently. As an example, I'll create the wireframe and you attempt to recreate it in Power BI:
As part of your excercise, you should be concious of the design principals previously shared in my other post.