The Practical Dashboards Book

Coming late 2024. To be notified when the publication date of Practical Dashboards is announced, subscribe to our email list.

The Practical Dashboards course was launched in 2019 and is currently available as a private or public online training workshop.

Detailed summary

Despite the fact that books and courses on information dashboard design have been available for years, many dashboards still fail to meet users' and organizations' expectations. Users have trouble finding answers to basic data-related questions and fail to notice urgent problems because they’re hidden behind clicks, hard to notice, or possibly not even on the dashboard. Because of these and other problems, many dashboards still end up under-used or even abandoned.

Based on Nick Desbarats’ experiences designing dashboards for over 50 large organizations and teaching dashboard design to thousands of professionals, Practical Dashboards uncovers the real reasons why so many dashboards fail to satisfy users and organizations; reasons that go far deeper than the visual design on which most dashboard books and courses focus. Readers will learn a highly practical, actionable framework for creating a system of different types of dashboards that enable users to find answers to their data-related questions far more quickly and easily, including fundamental ones such as, “Is everything O.K. at the moment?”, often for the first time.

Who should read this book

Practical Dashboards provides specific strategies, frameworks and best practices for those who are directly responsible for designing or developing information dashboards for employees, partners, stakeholders, and/or customers of their organization. Target readers include business intelligence professionals, data analysts, reporting managers, software developers, user interface designers, and similar roles. The strategies and frameworks in the book are sector-agnostic and are applicable to organizations in the finance, manufacturing, technology, health care, banking, insurance, government, military, non-profit, education, and most other sectors. Senior managers and other decision-makers who consume dashboards will also find the book to be of value since it enables them to ask for dashboard designs that help them to be more effective at their jobs. The book does not assume any specific prior technical knowledge.

Major topics:

  • Untangling the word “dashboard”

    • The eight fundamentally different types of information displays that are, unfortunately, all called “dashboards”

    • The two high-level categories in which the eight types of “dashboards” fall:

      • “Live Data” Dashboards that are based on data that’s refreshed regularly (hourly, monthly, etc.), and that enable an organization’s employees, partners, customers, or other stakeholders to interact with the organization’s data (e.g., operations dashboard, CFO dashboard, project dashboard, etc.)

      • “Static Data” Dashboards that are based on a static snapshot of data that may never be updated, and that are typically used for persuading or educating a target audience.

    • Note that only “Live Data” Dashboards are discussed in detail in the book.

  • “Live Data” Dashboards

    • Visual design best practices (color, layout, fonts, etc.)

    • The three major categories of “Live Data” Dashboards: Status Dashboards, Performance Dashboards, and Canned Analysis Dashboards

    • Status Dashboards for providing an overview of current conditions and spotting metrics that require attention (three types):

      • Entity Dashboards about a single type of entity (e.g., dashboard of employees, dashboard of transactions, dashboard of projects, etc.)

      • Area Dashboards about an area of the organization (e.g., finance dashboard, EMEA dashboard, call center dashboard, etc.)

      • Role Dashboards that contain all of the information that a given role needs to do their job (e.g., CEO dashboard, account representative dashboard, etc.)

      • Panels that should be added to Status Dashboards to maximize usefulness and user satisfaction:

        • Buried Problem Panels that surface problematic metrics that would otherwise be hidden behind drill-downs, filters, tabs, etc.

        • Entity List Panels that enable users to see and act on filtered lists of employees, transactions, etc.

        • Entity Detail Panels that show detailed information about a single employee, transaction, etc.

        • Description Panels that enable users to refer to static, background information about metrics without cluttering dashboards with static, non-updating information

      • How to automatically detect and flag metrics that require attention on dashboards:

        • Why conventional methods for flagging metrics that require attention (% change vs. previous period, % deviation from target, etc.) don’t work

        • The “Four-Threshold Method” for reliably flagging metrics that genuinely require attention

        • The “Measure Evaluation Pipeline”, a series of logical and statistical tests for automatically detecting metrics that require attention for a variety of reasons so that they can be visually flagged on dashboards

    • Performance Dashboards for assessing how well the organization is achieving its high-level strategic goals and identifying ways in which the organization can improve performance in the future

    • Canned Analysis Dashboards that automate potentially complex analyses behind a simple user interface that can be used by non-analysts

  • “Static Data” Dashboards (not discussed in depth in this book)

    • Persuasion Dashboards for persuading an audience to adopt a particular point of view, take a particular action, etc.

    • Explanation Dashboards for educating an audience about a concept, process, situation, etc.

    • Engagement Dashboards for drawing as much attention as possible to a topic

  • Implementation and maintenance guidance

Topics NOT covered in Practical Dashboards:

  • How to use specific software products (Tableau, Power BI, Qlik, etc.). The frameworks and best practices that are recommended in Practical Dashboards can be implemented using most major commercial dashboard development products.

  • How to create visually impressive dashboards, i.e., infographics. Only “Live Data” Dashboards are discussed in detail, and these are recommended to have a plain, minimalist visual design. “Static Data” Dashboards, which can have visually impressive designs, aren’t discussed in detail.

  • Performance measurement and improvement best practices (organizational and personal goal setting, strategic planning, KPI selection, etc.), though books on these topics are recommended.