Lesson 10:
Information Dashboard Design

Dr. Kam Tin Seong
Assoc. Professor of Information Systems (Practice)

School of Computing and Information Systems,
Singapore Management University

20 May 2025

Content

• Introducing information dashboard

• Information dashboard design best practices

• Common mistakes in dashboard design

• Ideal graphs for information dashboard

  • Bullet graph
  • Sparklines
  • Bandlines

Introducing information dashboard

Why are dashboards so important?

• A well-designed performance dashboard helps you to see more clearly by helping you to understand each fact more quickly so you can find patterns in the storm.

Classifying Dashboards by Role

• Dashboards for strategic purpose

• Dashboards for operational purpose

• Dashboards for analytics purpose

Dashboards for operational purpose

Dashboards for strategic purpose

Dashboards for analytics purpose

Best Practices for Dashboard Design

• Preparing stage
  • Target the user
  • Know what value your dashboard will add
  • Display only actionable information
• Design stage
  • Right tool for the right job
  • Context
  • Layout and clarity
  • Visual aesthetics

Preparing stage: Target the user

Preparing stage: User-centered Design Process

Reference: Developing and Applying a User-Centered Model for the Design and Implementation of Information Visualisation

Preparing stage: A User-Centric Dashboard Design Guide

Preparing stage: A User-Centric Dashboard Design Guide

Who is my target audience?

Preparing stage: A User-Centric Dashboard Design Guide

What value will the dashboard bring?

• Help management define what is important.
• Educate people in the organization about the things that matter.
• Set goals and expectations for specific individuals or groups.
• Help executives sleep at night because they know what’s going on.
• Encourage specific actions in a timely manner.
• Highlight exceptions and provide alerts when problems occur.
• Communicate progress and success.
• Provide a common interface for interacting with and analysing important business data.

Preparing stage: A User-Centric Dashboard Design Guide

What type of dashboard am I creating?

Preparing stage: A User-Centric Dashboard Design Guide

Information Discrimination

• Find the core

• Ask a better question

• Push to the appendix

• Reporting vs exploration

Preparing stage: A User-Centric Dashboard Design Guide

Choosing the perfect metric

Preparing stage: A User-Centric Dashboard Design Guide

Choosing the perfect metric

Ideal graphs for information dashboard

Right tool for the right job?

An assortment of typical dashboard gauges

Ideal graphs for information dashboard: Bullet Graphs

• Bullet graphs to replace gauges.

Bullet graph design specifications

Ideal graphs for information dashboard: Sparklines

• A sparkline is a very small line chart, typically drawn without axes or coordinates.

Reference: Sparklines

Pre-attentive with colour and symbol

Aspect ratio

• A graphic’s width/height ratio makes a big difference in displaying data.

Unintentional optical clutter

• Areas surrounding data-lines may generate unintentional optical clutter. Strong frames produce melodramatic but content-diminishing visual effects.

Sparklines best practice

• Enriched with context

Sparklines best practice

• Use reference line to provide context

Sparklines best practice

• Use reference region to provide context

Reference: Sparklines in ggplot2

Best Practices for Dashboard Design

Common mistakes in dashboard design

• Exceeding the boundaries of a single page

• Supplying inadequate context for the data

• Displaying excessive detail or precision

• Exposing measure indirectly

• Choosing inappropriate display media

• Introducing meaningless variety

• Using poorly designed display media

• Encoding quantitative data inaccurately

Common mistakes in dashboard design

• Exceeding the boundaries of a single page and requiring the viewer to scroll

Common mistakes in dashboard design

• Fragmenting data into separate screen

Common mistakes in dashboard design

• Displaying excessive detail or precision

Common mistakes in dashboard design

• Introducing meaningless variety

Common mistakes in dashboard design

• Arranging the data poorly

Common mistakes in dashboard design

• Highlighting important data ineffectively or not

Common mistakes in dashboard design

• Cluttering the display with useless decoration

Common mistakes in dashboard design

• Misusing or overusing colour

Common mistakes in dashboard design

• Designing an unattractive visual display

Common mistakes in dashboard design

• Design that failed to reveal KPIs effectively

Alternative dashboard design

• Design that reveals KPIs effectively

Common mistakes in dashboard design

• Design with poor layout and clarity

Alternative dashboard design

• Design with good layout and clarity

Common mistakes in dashboard design

• Design with poor visual aestheticsness

Alternative dashboard design

• Design with good visual aestheticsness

References

Dashboard Design

• A Guide to Creating Dashboards People Love to Use

• 5 Best Practices for Creating Effective Dashboards

• The Must Do’s of Marketing Dashboards

• Making Flow Happen

• With Dashboards: Formatting and layout Definitely Matter

• Dashboard Design for real-Time Situation Awareness

References

Dashboard Design

• Dashboard Design for Rich and Rapid Monitoring

• Pervasive Hurdles to Effective Dashboard Design

• Why Most Dashboards Fail

• Dashboard Confusion

• Dashboard Confusion Revisited

• Dashboard Design for at-a-glance monitoring

References

Bullet Chart & Sparklines

• Bullet graph @wiki

• Bullet Graph Design Specification

• Sparkline theory and practice

• Best Practices for Scaling Sparklines in Dashboard

• Introducing Bandlines