This week’s reading offers advice on how to build effective dashboards. While the focus of this class is primarily self-service analytics, the reading is oriented mo

How to Build Dashboards that Persuade, Inform, and Engage

Jeff Pettiross, Staff User Experience Designer, Tableau

2How to Build Dashboards that Persuade, Inform, and Engage

Think about a great conversation you’ve had, with no awkwardness or self-consciousness,

just effortless communication. In data visualization, there is a similar concept. Your

audience should smoothly absorb and use the information in a dashboard without

distractions or turbulence—this is described by people in the data viz world as “flow.”

Psychologist Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi has studied flow extensively. Czikszentmihalyi

and other researchers found that people experience flow when their skills are engaged

and they’re being challenged just the right amount. Flow is correlated with happiness,

creativity, and productivity.

So how do you create flow for your audience? As a dashboard designer, it’s your job to create

the smoothest possible experience for users, without unwelcome or obtrusive elements.

This is how you create dashboards that persuade, inform, and engage.

Contents The following practices can help you minimize annoyances and facilitate flow:

1. Unwrap your brain from the data and focus on your users ……………………………………3

2. Remove everything you can—and nothing else ……………………………………………………… 7

3. Show your work. Iterate relentlessly ………………………………………………………………………..8

About Tableau …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 10

Related whitepapers ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 10

Explore other resources ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 10

3How to Build Dashboards that Persuade, Inform, and Engage

1. Unwrap your brain from the data and focus on your users

As a data professional, you are likely consumed with data in the same way a music professor is

consumed with notes. When that scholar teaches a class, they can’t just spill out every single bit

of detail they know. An enormous infodump would be overwhelming, and it would probably turn

students off, especially younger or non-major students. Good teachers consider the knowledge and

needs of their students.

Similarly, it’s crucial for you to set aside your own immersion in the data and ask the questions:

What does my audience need? How often will they look at this data? What do they need from it?

What do they already know about this subject? Have they used dashboards before?

If you spend time figuring out the answers to these questions, your dashboards will be better for the

only people who really matter: the people using them.

Adapt your story for your audience

Every data set will have a different audience and different point of view. Let’s say you’re visualizing

a dataset about America’s bridges, showcasing those that are substandard and at risk for collapse.

One might focus purely on bridge quality while another could use census data to factor in how many

people use the bridges.

You could approach this project a few different ways depending on the intention—to warn the

public, drum up business for a construction company, or to crystallize priorities for the government.

It all depends on the audience, their skill level, and their knowledge of the subject. Just as you’re

trying to help your audience experience flow, the audience helps you narrow down options for the

presentation of data.

4How to Build Dashboards that Persuade, Inform, and Engage

This dashboard by Ben Jones of Data Literacy, LLC shows one interpretation of bridge data at the state-level. It provides filters for

the user to drill down into county or status. When you click on a bridge on the map, the dashboard updates with a street view.

5How to Build Dashboards that Persuade, Inform, and Engage

For example, these dashboards by Anya A’Hearn show a range of choices. Each of these

dashboards was meant to communicate to specific audiences. Each demands different skills and

challenges.

This dashboard is dense with data and contains a variety of interactive options. The audience for this dashboard would be

more advanced users with existing knowledge of the topic.

6How to Build Dashboards that Persuade, Inform, and Engage

This next dashboard is colorful and eye-catching. It has a strong, clearly worded message and is

working hard to get that message across.

This dashboard would be accessible for more novice users. The topic of firework injuries is one that most people immediately

understand and the interaction is limited and intentional.

7How to Build Dashboards that Persuade, Inform, and Engage

2. Remove everything you can—and nothing else

In their book The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White advise us to “omit needless

words.” In writing, redundancies and empty terms can cause static that gets in the way of

communication. The same is true of dashboards. Excess information, confusing graphics, and

unnecessary features can also make a dashboard difficult to use and understand.

For example, here are three visualizations of the distribution of tornadoes in the United States,

representing the first nine months of the year.

Each vertical line represents the time of day, with midnight at the top and noon in the middle. All three visualizations show, among

other things, that tornadoes are much more likely to take place in the afternoon during the summer. .

The difference between them is in the amount of visual information used to tell the story. At the left,

we have an extremely minimal presentation, which increases in complexity as we move to the right.

None of these are inherently better than the rest. The viz on the left may be perfect for audiences

intimately familiar with the material; for them, simplicity and removal of redundancy would be quite

welcome. For newcomers to the topic—or people who will only look at this visualization once—the

explicitness of the visualization on the right might be best.

So how do you know when something is clutter versus something important? This is where your

colleagues come in.

8How to Build Dashboards that Persuade, Inform, and Engage

3. Show your work. Iterate relentlessly.

As you build a culture of analytics, strive for a culture of critique—supportive, collaborative, frequent

critique. The more versions of something you create, and the more feedback you solicit along the way,

the better the final product will be. Don’t get isolated or stuck. Start working on something and then

show it to someone else. Use the feedback and get back to work. Continue that process until you’re

happy with the result. Think of what it takes to make a diamond. The heat, pressure, and time required

are extraordinary. So is the result.

Encouraging critique through trust and publication

To create a culture of critique, a few things are necessary. For one, you have to trust your colleagues.

If you and your coworkers respect each other, you’ll trust each other’s feedback.

Also, you need thick skin. Since your final product is ultimately for the benefit of users and clients,

your dashboard design should revolve around their needs, not your own preferences.

Writers often talk about how they have to “kill their darlings”—meaning sometimes their favorite part

of a story or script might have to be cut. The same thing can happen for designers. Keep your eye on

the big picture and be honest if something isn’t working. It also helps to have a public place—on a

real or virtual wall—for sharing work.

We have monitors in our office that allow us

to see visualizations, along with who created

it. Making work public creates constant

opportunities for feedback and improvement.

9How to Build Dashboards that Persuade, Inform, and Engage

Iterate, refine, and polish

Iteration is critical to creating effective dashboards. A dashboard should never sit stagnant over years

and years. It should adapt to changes in your audience and business. Even small tweaks can make a big

difference.

The final result will be a dashboard with drastically less noise and more breathing room for your audience

to digest the information. Constant iteration is how good ideas become great.

Work quickly. Get feedback. Consider your audience. Omit needless features. Repeat as necessary. This is

how you’ll create flow for yourself, your colleagues, and your users.

About Tableau

Tableau helps people transform data into actionable insights that make an impact.

Easily connect to data stored anywhere, in any format. Quickly perform ad-hoc analyses

that reveal hidden opportunities. Drag and drop to create interactive dashboards with

advanced visual analytics. Then share across your organization and empower teammates

to explore their perspective on data. From global enterprises to early-stage startups

and small businesses, people everywhere use Tableau’s analytics platform to see and

understand their data.

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