Before Designing a Dashboard

⚡ WHO is going to be using it?

Give me a list of test users. Who is signing off on the design?

Knowing your audience is so important in report design. This will change how you design and frame the report. Executives and analysts have very different needs, and need very different reports!

⚡ WHY are they going to be using it?

Are they monitoring processes? Is this to track performance? Are they looking to uncover insights? This will define the layout of a report - such as will it be KPI heavy or rely on drill downs.

⚡ HOW are they going to be using it?

This is knowing their skill level and method of ingestion. Having complex drill downs or report features may be wasted on certain users. Others may only want mobile reports. Maybe they need the raw data, in which case paginated reports could play a big part.

⚡ WHAT are their next steps?

Knowing what they are doing with the insights they find will allow you to design correctly. Your users aren't looking at graphs then forgetting them - they will usually need to perform action based on what they see. Knowing what this is will help you design a report to give them this information in the most useful way.

⚡What ACTION is this driving?

This should underpin not only every report, but also every visual on that report. If you cannot answer this question for your visuals or reports, ask yourself if it is beneficial. Do not fall into a trap of creating visuals just because you have some data. Make them useful!