When it comes to dashboard design there are endless options and choices to decide on. Communicating your information in a clear and user-friendly way is one of the most important aspects of developing a successful dashboard. In order to help you get moving we’ll share our top 5 tips for making your audience experience as pleasant as possible. The picture below shows you a before and after of a dashboard containing the exact same information but a different user interface.
Before
After
Tip 1: Spacing, spacing, spacing
Our number one tip for creating a user-friendly dashboard design is to leave enough spacing between headers, visuals and frames. A little breathing room between the elements on your page will make a huge difference on how your users process and digest the information.
Tip 2: Simple coloring
Make sure to limit the use of colors when designing your dashboard. If you do want to use different colors try to use lighter and darker shades of the same color or pick colors that are compatible. There are several handy tools available to help you select a cohesive color palette such as coolors.co, canva.com or colormind.io. Also try to avoid red or green as a base color as they are often used to indicate positive or negative values.
Tip 3: Frame information
Framing your information with background rectangles is one of the most straightforward ways to provide an easy to read dashboard. It is also a handy tool to group items together, such as your slicers.
Tip 4: Information overkill
Make sure to limit the number of visuals and information that is visible on your page. There needs to be a balance between showing all the necessary information and keeping a nice clean overview for your audience. Our tip for compromising between the two is to incorporate slicers and bookmarks in order to allow your user to determine which visual or information they need to see. This way you won’t have to compromise on the information included in the dashboard.
Tip 5: Font consistency
Make sure to have a consistent set of standard fonts and sizes for your dashboard. Few things in this world are as unpleasant on the eyes as using different fonts across your dashboard visuals. You don’t have to use the same font for the axis, data labels and headers, but we definitely recommend a maximum of 2. As long as you keep the consistency across the same text options.
