Advanced dashboard techniques

To communicate effectively with our dashboards, we can use a layout and some technical features to up our game. Let’s start looking at some of these in detail:

• Layout tricks: To help get your message across, you need to consider a few layout tricks that really make your message pop. These include the following:
  • Use a short top title in the Overview panel to make it clearer to read.
  • Add a description showing how to use the information and who it’s for to give the users the best chance of understanding the data presented.
  • Call out key indicators using visualizations such as Stat with sparklines, and show them first at the top of your dashboard.
  • Present panels in a grid to visually guide viewers through your dashboard and control their focus.
  • Do not cram too many panels into a single dashboard; this makes it hard to digest. Instead, use datalinks to other dashboards and separate the data more.
  • Use transparent panels to introduce visual spacing...