Practical Dashboards
Online: Four half-days
On-site: Two days
To take this course, either register for an upcoming public workshop for individuals, or inquire about scheduling a live online or on-site, in-person private workshop for 15 to 80 of your organization’s employees.
Course description
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, the Practical Dashboards course 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. Workshop participants 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 take this course
The Practical Dashboards course 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. Participants typically include business intelligence professionals, data analysts, reporting managers, software developers, user interface designers, and similar roles. The strategies and frameworks in the course 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 course to be of value since it enables them to ask for dashboard designs that help them to be more effective at their jobs. The course does not assume any specific prior technical knowledge, although participants with some prior dashboard design or development experience will find the course to be of greatest value since they will have directly experienced the challenges that the course addresses.
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 course.
“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 Monitoring 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 display static descriptions of 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, good/satisfactory/poor ranges, 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 course)
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, wrap up.
Topics NOT covered
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 subdued, 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 other resources on these topics are recommended in the course.
Workshop format
The workshop consists of engaging, interactive presentation segments that feature real-world and fictional dashboard examples, interleaved with group exercises and discussions. Best practices are demonstrated, not just stated, so that participants understand not just what the best practices are, but also why they yield dashboards that users find easier to use and more useful. No dashboard development or other specialized software is needed by participants for the workshop. The workshop is four half-days (online) or two full days (on-site) in length with breaks roughly once per hour.
Handouts, resources
All workshop participants receive the following as downloadable files:
Practical Dashboards Cheat Sheets PDF of commonly referenced frameworks, checklists, best practices, etc.
Practical Dashboards Sample Calculations Microsoft Excel file of fully documented examples of simple calculations referenced during the workshop
A PDF of all course slides used during the workshop
Several third-party books and websites are recommended during the workshop for more in-depth information on non-dashboard-specific topics