6 Mistakes Everyone Makes While Designing Dashboards
Tags: User Research, User Experience Design, Dashboard, UX, UX Design

These applications revolve around Dashboards. They are the gateway to all the data out there. When you dig deeper, you realize that what’s more important than “data” in dashboards is “information.”

This is what makes dashboards valuable. These are six mistakes people make while designing a dashboard for an enterprise.

Getting the Navigational models wrong.

Getting the navigational designs right is tricky.

Not many understand the approach behind it. They use a single menu to contain all the navigation, making the dashboard challenging to use.

Instead, Global navigation can be placed on top, including your Tools, Resources, Profile & Logout. Dashboard Navigation to the left, including your views, types of data, etc., and Breadcrumbs can include deeper-drill-downs within a content flow.

Not matching the user’s mental model.

Users interact with high-quality UI every day. They expect specific ways of finding content within dashboard menus and collapsed options.

While designing menus, if you don’t align them with the users’ mental model, you’ll create an unsuitable product.

Extensive user research must be done to categorize and name the sub-menus and sub-sub menus within the main menu. You can use Contextual Inquiry and Card Sorting processes while designing usable navigation models.

Not being able to project corresponding data graphically.

Individual charts, plots & graphs work better for comparison, whereas a few works are better for plotting data points. If you do not fully understand data, you’ll end up using the wrong visualizations, and the data becomes difficult to interpret.

So, before choosing the visualization, have a concrete understanding of the type of message you’re conveying through the data.

Static content on a dashboard serves no purpose.

The dashboard has no place for static content.

If a user knows what will be on the dashboard every day, he’ll not need the dashboard. On the other hand, Dynamic content is what encourages repeat uses. And this dynamic content should be at the heart of the dashboard.

They require attention & therefore, your visual design should cater to highlighting dynamic content.

Using excess padding and white spaces.

Similar to how a static web page is done, many designers use excess padding and white spaces in dashboard designs. However, they miss the point that data is the key and should be available with the least scroll.

The spread-out design creates inconvenience each time a function has to be performed. Global interactions, such as sort, search, and filter, should also be easily accessible.

“Compact design” is the crucial point here.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Not designing for different user roles.

When you don’t understand the role & position of a particular user in an enterprise, it is a recipe for an unusable design.

You need to understand the context & objectives of different users more than the data alone. You need to conduct extensive user research to understand the underlying needs better.

The dashboard could also have different views for different user roles, and it is important to understand everyone’s requirements to design better.

That sums up most of the common mistakes. Make sure you stay away from these & build a clean dashboard.