Business Intelligence Dashboard Design Best Practices
Nearly 100 BI professionals showed up in Mountain View to hear Microsoft BI expert Dan Bulos discuss Dashboard Design Best Practices. It’s a topic he knows well, having received an award at TechEd 2010.
Even the most significant information can be lost if it’s not displayed in a memorable way. Is the right format for critical values a grid, a graph, a gauge, maps, diagrams, or something else? Where does a scorecard fit in?
Dan advocates for keeping dashboards simple – particularly for initial release. As he pointed out, users can absorb and will ask for more information on a dashboard over time. But at the beginning, there should be a zero learning curve. This requires that dashboard developers truly understand what’s important to their users, and communicate only the most critical indicators, which should be exception oriented.
Check out the slides above, especially the road map by Andrew Abela on page 33, which shows what type of charts to use depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. And join us at an upcoming meeting of the Bay Area Microsoft Business Intelligence Group. We meet on the first Thursday of every month in either San Francisco or Mountain View.