What would your top tips be when creating impactful, easy-to-understand data reporting dashboards?

Data & Analytics Data Center Peer Insights

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Manager, Security Operations and Compliance in Finance (non-banking)a year ago

Define your audience early on.

Dashboards for operations are very different than dashboards for a management team, which again are different than dashboards you would be presenting to your board!

Head of Data in Bankinga year ago

Step 1 is to understand the primary question that needs to be answered and ideally, this question should be linked to the organizational strategy. Step 2 is to understand the analytical path that the user will follow to answer that question which will guide the drill downs, filters, slicers, etc. Finally, put a BI Analyst, Analytics Engineer and the user together so that they can design and build the dashboard together - the user will provide the requirement, the BI Analyst will translate and the Analytics Engineer will build.

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Communications Manager in Retaila year ago

100% this. If you aren't addressing a behavioural change or outcome - the data is just data :)

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Director in IT Servicesa year ago

In my opinion, If the ask for the number of elements of the dashboard go beyond single digit, it means that either a) it needs to be a report, and not a dashboard
b) they need to be separate dashboards

Irrespective of the audience.

EMEA IT Service Management Manager in Miscellaneousa year ago

Make sure you keep an eye on the audience; whatever you produce needs to be suitable for them.

Then consider requirements from a technical perspective, then effort and finally training.

Also monitor usage after you have made it available.

Director, Information Technology in Healthcare and Biotecha year ago

Great comments thus far, just want to add a note about accessibility. When creating dashboards keep in mind some audience members may be color blind, you'll need to also include alt text if you are using red, yellow, green etc to visually indicate whether the metrics are favorable vs unfavorable.

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Director in IT Servicesa year ago

Great point Penny! One way to educate the presenters, creators is to be able to define a template/ color scheme that is supportive of/follows Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).