Tableau & Power BI Dashboards Vs Mokkup Dashboard Wireframing
A dashboard is a graphical user interface (GUI) that provides users with an overview of key performance indicators (KPIs), metrics, and other important data points in a visually appealing and easy-to-understand format. Dashboards are commonly used in business intelligence (BI) and data analytics applications to monitor and analyze organizational performance and trends.
Wireframing is a key part of the dashboard creation process. It acts as a gateway stage for creating mockups or prototypes before deploying the final dashboards.
In this article, we will discuss the following
- What goes into a dashboard design
- What wireframing is, and how it is useful for all the stakeholders
- What Power BI and Tableau do for dashboard design
- What Mokkup as a dashboard wireframing tool
What Goes Into a Dashboard Design?
Since dashboards are visual KPI representations, users should minimize textual content and optimize the converted data. This makes it easy to understand or drive insights. However, the stage from realizing there’s a need to visualize data to executing the dashboard in an appropriate way isn’t easy. It is filled with several stakeholders putting forth their opinions and thoughts on the look and functionality of the final product.
This is what happens in a typical dashboard design:
Creating a Pre-Building Document
As the name suggests, a pre-building document is a statement of purpose and objectives behind creating the dashboard. It typically contains
- Why the dashboard is being created
- What questions the dashboard will answer
- Who the intended users of that dashboard are
- What the main KPIs in the dashboard are
- The list of dimensions and metrics used in the report
Pre-building documents help align stakeholders on the dashboard representation purpose and what would be displayed on it.
Wireframing the Dashboard
Wireframes are visual layouts of the dashboard. They don’t represent the final product or the interactions between the elements. We will discuss wireframing some more in the next section.
Traditionally, pen and paper has been used to wireframe dashboards. However, with technology permeating individual-to-individual interactions, Excel and Google Sheets are strong contenders for creating low-fidelity dashboard representations. As technology advanced, tools like Mokkup, Sketch, Figma, and Adobe XD started taking over the wireframing space.
Creating a Mock Dashboard Wireframe
Mockups are high-fidelity graphic renderings of what the final dashboard could look like. Since wireframes are static with nearly zero interactivity, mockups help visualize the end product.
Usually, this part is done using design software. They help present the right data structures and the level of detail. Mockups also determine where the metrics will be placed and how they would be linked to the data seed and calculated.
They also help in finalizing fields that will be needed. This allows users to get involved early so that the feedback is targeted and the end product goes through limited revisions.
So, creating Power BI dashboards or Tableau data visualization is the end product, while mockups just create a blueprint of what Tableau or Power BI dashboard will look like.
Creating a Prototype
Once you’ve established interactivity, the location of the elements, and the dashboard flow, prototyping comes into the picture. Prototypes are generally high-fidelity because they are the last step before the final dashboard execution. However, prototypes sometimes don’t replicate the whole dashboard. Often, they just indicate the interactivity among the elements so that the ideas are conveyed without investing much time into the activity.
What is Wireframing, and How Does It Help Stakeholders?
We’ve briefly touched upon wireframing in the process above. However, it warrants further discussion because it is crucial in dashboard design.
A wireframe is basically a skeleton of the final design. It identifies what should exist where and what all should exist in the given space. It is important because it tells the development team what the user team wants to measure and how they want to visualize it.
While wireframes are close to the dashboard designs, they don’t necessarily have to represent the final version. The final product could often be drastically different because the end users realized that the mockups needed to be tweaked to fit the intended criteria.
However, in most cases, wireframes are the final guidelines on what elements should be in the dashboard and what data sets they should track. Even though the color combinations, themes, fonts, and formats could change in the final version, the skeleton remains the same.
How are Wireframes Created?
Traditionally, organizations would use pens and papers to draw the skeletons of the dashboard to explain it to the development teams. While the practice was widely prevalent, it posed the following challenges:
1) Paper & Pen Is Not Accurate
You can’t really draw things to scale on a piece of paper without sophisticated equipment ensuring that everything is of the right intended measurement, which ends up making the wireframe low precision. And in general, management does not have the time to use protractors, compasses, and establishing scales when giving a wireframe.
2) New Iteration with Each Feedback
Since it was sketched on paper, every iteration needed a new version designed. With each stakeholder giving their inputs, new iterations would pop up, and the user and development teams were hard-pressed trying to keep track of the final version.
3) Static Models Without Interactivity
Being limited to a design on paper made it hard to test whether the wanted interactivity among the pieces was realistic or sustainable.
4) Missing Visual Appeal
Since most user departments tend not to be renowned artists, it is difficult to communicate the required visual appeal in the final dashboard, making the conversations about cosmetic changes much more cumbersome.
We’ve discussed above that Excel and Google Sheets arose as strong contenders for pen and paper because, let’s be honest, the bar was set really low here. While they resolved the issues around sharing stakeholder feedback, they couldn’t handle the problems of visual appeal and interactivity; hence the popularity of Mokkup, Sketch, Figma, and Adobe XD.
While Sketch, Figma, and Adobe XD are effective, they require considerable experience for handling the native interface to create even simple representations. Mokkup, on the other hand, is highly intuitive and provides readymade, fully-customizable templates and several drag-and-drop elements and widgets to create quick dashboard wireframes.
Additionally, Mokkup.ai lets you create dynamic elements — something a dashboard wireframing tool doesn’t usually allow — that come pre-populated with dummy data to simplify your subsequent phases.
How Does Wireframing Help Stakeholders
Summarizing the content above, wireframes provide iterative value to stakeholders because
1) Planning and Organizing Content:
Wireframes provide a clear visual representation of the structure of a website or application, including the placement of content and functionality. This helps plan and organize content to ensure it is presented logically and intuitively.
2) Identifying Usability Issues:
Wireframes can help identify potential usability issues early in the design process, long before resources are invested in development. By testing the wireframes with users, designers can identify areas of confusion or difficulty and make adjustments before moving on to more detailed design work.
3) Collaboration and Communication:
Wireframes serve as a common language between designers, developers, and stakeholders, helping to facilitate collaboration and communication throughout the design process. Wireframes can help ensure that everyone is on the same page and working towards a shared vision by providing a clear visual representation of the design.
4) Streamlining the Design Process:
Wireframes can help streamline the design process and reduce the need for revisions later by providing a clear and structured representation of the design. This can save time and resources and help ensure that the final product meets the needs of users and stakeholders.
What Power BI and Tableau Do for Dashboard Design ?
Power BI and Tableau are data visualization and business intelligence tools that allow users to analyze and present visually appealing and interactive data.
Power BI is a suite of business analytics tools developed by Microsoft that allows users to connect to a wide range of data sources, transform and clean the data, create custom visualizations, and share reports and dashboards with others.
Power BI dashboards can create reports, interactive visualizations, and dashboards that allow users to explore and analyze data in real-time.
Tableau is another popular data visualization tool that allows users to connect to and blend data from various sources, create interactive dashboards and visualizations, and share insights with others.
Tableau data visualization offers many features and functionality, including creating custom calculations, performing advanced analytics, and integrating with other business intelligence tools.
Power BI and Tableau offer powerful data visualization and analysis tools and are widely used in business intelligence and data analytics applications.
The choice of Power BI vs. Tableau often depends on the specific user needs and preferences, and the types of data sources and business applications used.
While Power BI and Tableau have been used for mockups, the process differs so vastly that it defeats the entire purpose of wireframes and mockups.
Since these platforms are not intuitive or easy to operate and require prior experience or knowledge, end users will still have to resort to one of the wireframing tools to get the developers to create wireframes on these platforms.
What Mokkup Does as a Dashboard Wireframing Tool ?
Mokkup is a high-fidelity dashboard wireframing tool that is highly intuitive and presents many readily available tools for end users to create wireframes to communicate with developers. Since users don’t need any prior experience with Mokkup, anybody can create wireframes.
Additionally, as discussed above, the host of pre-designed and fully customizable templates provides quick access to users unsure of the KPIs that should go into their dashboard. The plethora of tools, elements, and widgets make it easy to create dashboard wireframes just by dragging and dropping.
What sets Mokkup apart from other wireframing tools is that it not only wireframes the dashboard but also creates a mockup so that users can picture what the end product would look like.
The problem with using Tableau or Power BI for mockup is that, since someone with the relevant development experience only can use those software services, the end user would have to do numerous back-and-forths just to get the intended output. As a result, the end user can’t see each iteration until it’s completely built, post which, if they need something changed, the developers would have to go back to the drawing board.
With Mokkup, users can bypass this hurdle. The end users can wireframe and mockup the final dashboard on Mokkup.ai before forwarding it to the Tableau or Power BI developer to create the final dashboard.
Basically, Tableau and Power BI are essential to creating the final product. However, Mokkup.ai ensures you bypass all the intermediate steps with little-to-no effort.
Conclusion
Mokkup.ai is just a wireframing and dashboard mockup tool. This information is vital because users still require Power BI or Tableau subscription to create and deploy the final dashboard.
However, the number of discussions and iterations deciding the final output offset the immediate gains users can derive from the dashboards. That is why wireframing is vital in the process. While most tools offer rudimentary and low-fidelity wireframes, Mokkup.ai presents a host of tools and templates to create wireframes and mockups for the cost of less than one coffee a month.
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