Forum Discussion
UI / UX Design process for PowerBI
dbuchter good advice and thanks for sharing. When I work with my clients, I create a working copy with a sample dataset to show them how they are going to interact, drill up/down, drill through, cross filter/highlight, and then based on the feedback I further tweak the design. I'm not a designer by profession but working with businesses for more than 20 years, with my experience I translate their requirement to prototype and then take it from there.
Since I live and breath Power BI and using it since it was made available, I'm aware of its limitation and I do highlight during my discussion with the client in case they have different expectations. I found it is very helpful when I make the prototype using sample data that is based on actual data from the client. They can easily see the value when they see their sample data in action and communication becomes easier for further improvement.
Thanks for sharing the tools you use, maybe it will become handy sometime in the future. Cheers!!
You make an excellent point, and an important note that I left out - the design or UI only matters to a certain extent (in the stakeholders minds) until they actually see the real data visualized to determine if the dashboard is solving their problem, or answering their question about the data. Once my prototype design is handed over to the developers, we still can go through a few rounds with the stakholders once they see the actual data in the Power BI dashboard. I will jump into Power BI and make UI tweaks as necessary.
My case is unique in the sense that we have a separate resource for UI/UX (me) - not every team handling reporting does. My responsibility is to elevate the user experience among all of the tools our group interacts with, Power BI being just one part of that mix. Therefore, I'm not that interested in being an expert at data modeling and prefer to solution outside of Power BI for UI design. If Power BI were my primary resposibility, I would most certainly design and develop exclusively in the tool for exactly the reason you mention - to be working with the actual data from the get-go.
I'm looking for a UI/UX design guide. It doesn't have to be built specifically for PBI. We are trying align all of our Microsoft reporting tools around a set of design standards to create uniformity. Does anyone know a good resource for this type of guide.
Intereting question. So you are looking for a more general type of guide or documented best-practices. I don't have any great examples, and I have looked. There are certainly dicsussions and articles in the UX/UI spere that talk about data visualization design, but I haven't seen anything in particular that inspired me personally. Take a look at Nielsen/Norman Group - a big UX community with lots of articles and best practice recommendations on digital platforms in general - search data visualizations, you might find something useful there.
parry2k (...) I create a working copy with a sample dataset (...)
Perfect. When I dont have a sample dataset, I create them in Excel spreadsheet and import to Power BI.
Anyway, what I miss is having a tool that better documents paginations, popups, navigation buttons and other interface elements, especially for very complex dashboards.
