Hi Fabric Community,
Power BI is an excellent analytics tool. However, in my experience, many Power BI reports fall short when it comes to design and user experience. A great report is more than just placing charts and tables on a canvas. It's about guiding the user, creating a smooth, app-like experience, and making insights easy to digest.
At first glance, Power BI might seem limited in terms of design flexibility, but that's not really the case. You can create beautiful, highly professional reports using the native Power BI visuals and formatting pane.
Generally, it takes time, experience and a lot of trial and error to build good-looking reports. That is why I created Arbiphex, a design toolkit for Power BI that contains a fully written JSON theme file, a lot of pre-made visuals and example reports to really elevate your report designs and create app-like experiences. Feel free to check out the website for more inspiration!
Here are some practical design tips that can help you in designing your reports. These are based on my personal experience and opinion, but I found these generally work quite well:
Enable Maintain Layer Order
(Formatting pane > General > Properties > Advanced options)
Useful for when visuals overlap; like buttons on charts or cards inside donut charts. This setting ensures visuals don't jump in front when clicked and thus hiding all visuals that were initially placed on top. This feature only works when publishing to Power BI Service. This will not have any impact when designing in Desktop.
Disable Header Icons
(Formatting pane > General > Properties > Header Icons)
For simple visuals like slicers and cards, header icons often just get in the way. Especially on dense pages where they constantly pop up and clutter the interface and sometimes make interaction with another element very difficult.
Follow a Clear Layout Pattern
A consistent layout helps users navigate easily. I usually go with a left-hand sidebar for navigation/slicers, a top bar with the page title and KPIs, and the rest of the space for visual content. Users scan the screen in patterns (like the Z-pattern), so structure matters.
Style Buttons and Slicers Thoughtfully
Take some time to format your buttons and slicers. Format the hover states and keep the design clean. These little touches really lift the overall design and user experience.
Avoid Visual Clutter
This is an important one. Hide any element on the screen that doesn't add value and avoid duplication. For example, use meaningful chart titles so you can often hide the axis titles. Or if you use data labels, consider disabling the axis values. Clean visuals means a better user focus.
Use Soft Backgrounds
Stick with (very) light, neutral backgrounds. Vibrant colors can make reports harder to read, often look unpolished and overwhelm the user. The visuals should pop, not the background.
Avoid Using Red & Green as Theme Colors
These are great for sentiment (good/bad) indicators, but not as primary design colors. If your company brand colors include red or green, make sure they contrast enough with the colors you use for KPIs.
Skip Borders, Use Shadows
Shadows offer a cleaner look. Set shadow 'Placement' to 'Custom' in the formatting pane and further fine-tune the shadow. Setting placement to Custom unlocks more detailed settings, rather than the basic ones that are visible by default.
Stay Consistent with Themes
Take the time to write a JSON theme file and apply it to your reports. It enforces design consistency and saves a lot of time when adding new visuals as they will fit right in when you drag them onto the canvas.
Use Native Shapes and Images
I personally like to use shapes and images in my reports directly instead of making a background in an external tool such as Figma. I know the latter is best practice but I like the flexibility and easy maintenance of the former. In my experience, impact on report performance is limited when using shapes and images in the report to create your designs.
Use Field Parameters
(At the time of writing this post, field parameters are still in preview and need to be enabled in the Options window)
Field Parameters allow users to switch between measures and dimensions in a visual, and they are much easier to maintain than bookmarks. They also allow for dynamic column selection in a table, for example. Using field parameters makes your reports more interactive.
Align Visuals Precisely
Don't eyeball it. Apply proper alignment and ensure consistent margins between visuals. Misalignment really looks unprofessional.
Use Icons
Icons improve navigation and overall UX. There are plenty of great free for commercial-use icon packs out there. My go-to is Material Design Icons by Pictogrammers .
Format Numbers Consistently
Hide decimals where appropriate. Clean number formatting improves readability and professionalism. It all boils down to less is more.
Colors Are Important
Create a color palette before building your reports and assign them using the Theme Editor in Power BI Desktop. Not sure on what colors to use? You can use tools such as Coolors to generate beautiful color palettes. Another great tool is Just Color Picker. This Windows tool allows you to select any pixel on the screen and get the color information (RGB, HEX), so you can immediately use it in your reports.
Don't Be Afraid of Bookmarks
Well, you should be afraid a little bit. Bookmarks can be difficult to maintain, but using visual grouping eases the pain. However, with bookmarks you can do a lot of wonderful stuff like creating contextmenus and popup windows.
