UX Design — Defining the Dashboard
From knowing how many calories I burnt from my morning run, to knowing how much money I have in my bank account, dashboards are everywhere. Dashboards form the core of every application. A workout app, a banking app or even a gaming app has one thing in common and that’s a dashboard. The dashboards in all these apps cater to and full-fill wildly different needs of the user.
Since the dashboards can cover such diverse information, they can help make the application very efficient. So how do we as designer design a dashboard? Where does one decide where to start and what to include?
A dashboard can be used and designed to achieve the following goals:
1. Monitoring day to day performance
2. Getting a macro view of the whole application
3. Helping with day to day tasks (smart suggestions, to do lists etc.)
4. Finding new opportunities
5. Management
Types of Dashboards
Still how do we decide which type of Dashboard will work best for the specific needs of the product?
One can start with figuring out exactly what is it that we wish to get out of a dashboard. Who will it’s users be and what information will they require for the smooth functioning of the application or product.
Questions
In order to understand what functionalities or features will be used in building the dashboard, one needs to ask the following macro level questions:
What is the purpose of your dashboard? What do you wish to achieve through it?
What is the company’s overall strategy?
Who will be using the dashboard?
How regularly will the data refresh be required?
Describe the users profile.
What will the user be using the dashboard for?
What will be the frequency of use?
What kind of data will the user be consuming through the dashboard?
Where does the dashboard stand in the hierarchy of the application?
The Matrix
The answers that one gets from client discussions can be then grouped into segments:
1. The macro operation of the Dashboard, 2. The user bas, 3. How it will be used and 4. The skill of the user.
Application of these segments using the permutations and combinations of the following matrix, one can come up with a custom dashboard which caters to the users specific needs.
Eg. COVID-19 dashboard for India (https://www.covid19india.org/) is an operational dashboard with frequent updates, key metrics and KPIs, used at a say company wide strata (if we can consider each country as an organisation for this example), functioning at granular level (Used to monitor specific issues and patterns) and can be used by individuals of skill levels ranging form Low to High to understand the data.
Structure of a Dashboard
How can a Dashboard be structured? The hierarchy and laying of a dashboard is something which can be defined once the users needs and how he/she will be using the dashboard is defined. But in generic terms, the dashboard can be split into the following parts.
On an ending note, I would like to say that since the dashboard is the summation of the application, and at the same time being one of the most visually exciting elements, it’s often one of the first things to be designed. In practice, one would recommend the opposite. A dashboard is a summary view of everything else and displays key info from various parts of the application. It’s just more practical to design it at the end. Otherwise, you will need to constantly go back and update your dashboard designs while you are working on all the other pages. Furthermore, once a majority of the views are designed, you will have a ton of components to work with when putting together a dashboard.
Thank you!
