Tableau | 5 Tips That Can Drastically Improve Your Dashboard’s User Experience — Part 1
It is well known that user experience is an integral part in the development of any dashboard/app/website. A well-built dashboard keeping user experience in mind can instill confidence in the work and also provides a positive experience for the user.
Following are few UX tips for dashboarding which I have used in my work and has attracted good feedbacks from the end user:
1. Show “Apply” option when using Multi-select filters:
Will you be comfortable with a dashboard loading each and every time you select a value from a long list of 100+ values. There are chances that you will stop using the dashboard. This is what happens when the user has to wait for few — many seconds depending on the dashboard performance to get the data they finally want. Hence it is always a very good practice or even a must to show the “Apply” option for multi-select filters so that the end user can select the values they want and hit the APPLY button.
2. Minimize the usage of scrollbars:
Users often decide whether to stay or leave based on what they can see without scrolling. And scrollbars are a pain to users when there are two tabular charts with long list side by side for comparison since he/she has to scroll the bars of two charts at same pace to rightly compare the data. This can be solved by adding page numbers to the dashboard and is one of my tried and true ways to improve dashboarding UX.
P.S. Check out my article on how to implement dynamic pagination here.
3. Include a Glossary section in the dashboard:
It is practical to not be able to understand the intricacies of the dashboard when the user views it for the first time. So, its always a best bet to include a glossary tab/icon and consume this space to explain the complex calculations used, provide detailed explanation on the concepts, including navigation guide, FAQs and whatever information the user to know. To put in simple terms, the primary objective is to make the end user understand the dashboard better and with ease.
4. Add takeaways section to the dashboard:
The end goal of a dashboard is to provide key insights to the users that aids in their decision-making process. Obviously, visualizations should help them get there, however, highlighting and summarizing the key insights/takeaways from the dashboard can add immense value to the users and improve their experience.
5. Add commentary in tooltips rather than just numbers:
The usual practice of adding tooltips is to include the label and its corresponding value. This serves the purpose for most of the users but at the same time this doesn’t make any impact as well. What if the tooltips are made in a way that it explains the viz to the user rather than just putting out the values. This can create a better engagement of the user with the viz and I have personally felt this myself.
P.S: I took inspiration on the above two points from the Travel Recovery Insights Portal created by BCG and is available in tableau public here. This dashboard serves as a very good reference and a learning source for me.
Thanks for reading & follow these tips to take your dashboard to the next level 🚀!
