A dashboard wireframe is a graphic layout that describes the fundamental components and order of a dashboard design. It’s a basic sketch or digital layout that indicates the positions of various elements, including KPIs, important sections, and data visualizations like charts and tables.
It assists data analysts and BI developers in creating a user-friendly and intuitive dashboard interface by placing more emphasis on utility than looks. To ensure a strong framework for effective development and user-centric design decisions, the wireframe serves as the basis upon which the data is modeled and structured for development
Table of Contents
- What is Wireframing?
- What is the Purpose of Wireframing?
- What Goes into a Dashboard Wireframe?
- What Tools are Used for Creating Wireframes?
- 4 Examples of Dashboard Wireframes to Start Your Next Project
What is Wireframing?
Creating exceptional BI dashboards involves more than just branding or changing chart colors. Designing effective dashboards requires a clear process and testing of ideas. Without this structured approach, projects can struggle. Wireframes and prototypes are vital tools in this scenario, offering a roadmap to shape and evaluate concepts, preventing potential project pitfalls.
As a kind of blueprint for your dashboard design, wireframes let you see all the screens, various elements, and user experience (UX) concerns of your idea before you ever think about building a working prototype or giving your design to a developer. Wireframing is a quick and simple process that lets you test ideas early in the design process and even get insightful input on your project from key stakeholders.
What is the Purpose of Wireframing?
Wireframes have three key purposes:
- Dashboard wireframes are important to maintain a user-centric design approach, ensuring the focus remains on the end user’s needs and experience.
- They precisely outline the fundamental elements of the design, establishing a hierarchy for information, visual components, and interactive features, ensuring clarity and usability.
- Rapid creation of dashboard wireframes speeds up the initial design phases, enabling quick brainstorming and exploration of diverse layout options to refine the dashboard’s structure and functionality.
Let’s have a look at each of these purposes in more detail.
1. User-Centric Design With Wireframes:
Wireframes are useful tools for communication because they help BI developers produce ideas, gather input from users, and start discussions with stakeholders. By carrying out user testing in the early stages of wireframing, the developer/data analysts can receive candid feedback and pinpoint important pain points which helps in the development of the dashboard.
Dashboard wireframing is a precise method to visualize and analyze user interactions with the dashboard elements. Employing examples of different charts/KPIs, within the wireframe allows designers to prompt users with queries like, “What data would you want in this section of the dashboard?”
This technique enables a user-centric approach, fostering insights into user expectations and behaviors specific to dashboard elements and functionalities.
2. Defining Dashboard Features through Wireframes:
When explaining ideas to others, using technical terms might not make sense to everyone. With dashboard wireframes, you show exactly how each part works, making it clear for everyone involved. For example, a developer can showcase different charts with the same data and gather input on which stakeholders prefer.
These wireframes also help sort out how much space each part of the dashboard needs and how they fit together visually and functionally. It’s like arranging puzzle pieces to make a clear picture. Sometimes, seeing it this way helps spot things that might not quite fit, so you can tweak or remove them for a smoother dashboard layout.
3. Efficiency and Affordability in Wireframe Construction:
Wireframes are extremely simple to use and cost-effective. With just a pen and paper, one can swiftly sketch out a wireframe without any expense. Additionally, an array of available tools allows for the creation of digital wireframes within minutes.
Wireframes, make it simple to find and fix problems and errors by displaying the basic layout, saving both time and money. It is imperative to address issues early on because as the product design progresses, it gets more difficult to make modifications.
What Goes into a Dashboard Wireframe?
Creating a wireframe for a dashboard involves summarizing the components that are necessary for a successful data-driven user interface. A well-structured layout ensures a balanced distribution of elements and content, making it easy to understand and navigate. A dashboard wireframe typically consists of the following elements. Let’s explore the sequence for organizing elements on the dashboard:
- Headers and Titles: Clear identification of sections, providing context and guiding users through the dashboard’s content.
- Navigation Elements: Menu bars, buttons, or tabs facilitating easy movement across different sections or pages within the dashboard.
- Filters and Search Fields: Tools allowing users to refine and explore specific data sets within the dashboard.
- KPI Cards: Components showcasing certain data sets, metrics, or functionalities, such as widgets for recent activities, performance summaries, or customizable elements.
- Data Visualizations: Key data metrics and insights are displayed through graphs, charts, tables, and other visual representations.
- Call-to-Action Elements: Buttons or prompts guiding users to take certain actions or delve deeper into particular data insights.
A dashboard wireframe attempts to depict the basic structure and arrangement of items necessary for an intuitive, user-friendly, and informative dashboard interface while prioritizing functionality above aesthetics.
What Tools are Used for Creating Wireframes?
In today’s tech-rich environment, designers benefit from various sophisticated wireframing tools tailored for dashboard creation. These tools offer built-in dashboard components like key charts, metrics, and navigation, streamlining the wireframing process significantly.
Designers can quickly develop dashboard wireframes using pre-designed elements, which saves time and depends on pre-established design choices for user-friendly and effective interfaces. Let’s have a look at the tools below:
- Mokkup.ai: It is a dashboard wireframing tool that enables users to create wireframes from scratch or use pre-designed templates across various industry categories. It offers diverse charts, themes, customizable elements, and more to facilitate the easy construction of your dashboard design.
- Balsamiq: It specializes in low-fidelity wireframing, offering a simple and intuitive interface for quick conceptualization of ideas.
- Sketch: This is a design tool known for its powerful vector editing and design system development, which allow accurate UI/UX design processes and wide plugin support.
- Figma: It is known for its real-time collaboration features and adaptable design capabilities, it stands out as a collaborative interface design and prototyping tool. Ideal for teams, Figma offers flexibility for mobile apps, web pages, and web design projects, enabling seamless collaboration and customizable design changes.
4 Examples of Dashboard Wireframes to Start Your Next Project
Starting a dashboard wireframe can be a daunting process. Seeking dashboard wireframe examples to inspire your design? Whether it’s for different types of dashboards, ranging from analytics to operational, here are four dashboard wireframe examples that offer valuable insights for your project’s development and design process.
1. Managerial Dashboard
The Managerial Dashboard wireframe offers two views — Spare Parts Inventory Management and Executive Dashboard. The spare part management provides an overview of key spare part metrics, allowing managers to oversee inventory levels, track usage, monitor procurement, and assess overall performance.
The executive view provides a comprehensive summary of essential metrics, including downtime indicators, job progress, machine status, efficiency rates, and trending work logs, helping in informed decision-making and strategic planning.
2. Grocery Management
The Grocery Management dashboard comprises two views: Admin and Staff. The Admin view showcases top-selling products, sales trends, categories, current stock levels, staff-wise sales, low stock alerts, and staff performance comparisons.
Meanwhile, the Staff view focuses on task lists, sales and item performance, overview of sales, top-selling products, ratings, and sales trends. These insights cater to distinct managerial and operational needs within the grocery store.
3. Budget Dashboard
The Budget dashboard wireframe delivers insights on various aspects including project count, remaining balance, total budget, spending details, CAPEX allocation by department, forecast accuracy, revenue ratio, and spending categorization.
Additionally, it outlines revenue metrics such as total revenue, units sold, monthly recurring revenue, actual versus expected revenue, average revenue per customer, and revenue trends across different channels and categories.
4. Customer Satisfaction Analysis
The Customer Satisfaction Analysis dashboard wireframe’s comprehensive insights include percentages of satisfied customers, trends in Net Promoter Scores (NPS), and the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSS), providing a detailed view of customer sentiment. Additionally, it highlights trends in Effort Scores (CES) to assess the ease of customer interactions, ensuring a thorough analysis of customer satisfaction metrics.
Conclusion
To sum up, dashboard wireframing is an essential stage in producing effective and user-centered designs. It makes it possible to see elements, layout, and user experience, which promotes effective development and well-informed decision-making. Take a look at different examples, like templates from PowerBI and Tableau, to get ideas for how to build and design your dashboard. It can help you see what might work best for your project.
Using wireframes helps in refining designs, optimizing usability, and ensuring successful dashboard interfaces. Through thoughtful wireframing and the use of appropriate tools, designers can create impactful dashboards that resonate with users and meet diverse business needs.
Mokkup.ai’s pre-designed dashboard templates offer seamless editing and customization, effortlessly aligning with your specific needs and goals. By using these templates, you can ensure a solid dashboard that highlights key aspects without having to start from scratch.
