BUSINESS PERFORMANCE DASHBOARD
The client name and other details like mockups and prototypes are sensitive. Please contact me to schedule time to go over them in person.
CHALLENGE
The client, a team internal to a large telecommunications company, made extensive use of dashboards, compiling information from a wide variety of sources across many disparate groups, and had found that over time, these dashboards were no longer effective. They were interested in revamping the dashboards so that they better told a story and minimized the cognitive load required to decipher the volume of data available.
The current dashboard was cluttered and difficult to quickly decipher. The color palette was jarring, making less-effective use of a distinctive brand color. Tables were poorly named or too busy. Overall, it was a collection of data, but it wasn’t a story.
TOOLS
XD, Photoshop
ROLE(S)
UX Designer
GOAL
The redesigned dashboards needed to tell a story, quickly and clearly, while also serving the needs of those who needed a more granular look at the state of the this group's performance. It needed to incorporate a clean design that was familiar but refined.
PROCESS
I began the design process by working with the dashboard maintainer to understand as much as possible about the business and what this data was conveying. From there, I was able to identify gaps in the dashboard, opportunities to display the data in a more compelling way and draw new correlations.
RESEARCH
For this project, I did not have the benefit of speaking with the consumers of this dashboard, only it’s maintainer. As such, my understanding of the problems, successes and opportunities of the current implementation had to be filtered through them. This meant, ultimately, taking some assumptive leaps in what form a viable solution would take.
DESIGN
I developed a color palette that incorporated the company’s primary brand color in a way that didn’t overwhelm and instead served as a focal point for areas that needed attention. I created a dashboard view that compiled like data visualizations for various teams for easy comparison. Less-important horizontal bar charts were made vertical, and compressed, taking up much less space on-screen and allowing the reader to focus.
I thought about metrics I, if I were a decision maker for this business, would like to see that were missing, and vetted these ideas with the project stakeholder. This led to charts surfacing high and low performing teams, better visualizations of data distribution and graphs illustrating changes over time.
The most important charts and graphs, those that painted a picture of the business as a whole, were created and placed in the upper left. This pattern was made consistent across of the various dashboard views so that readers could reliably locate this information when needed.
I thought about metrics I, if I were a decision maker for this business, would like to see that were missing, and vetted these ideas with the project stakeholder. This led to charts surfacing high and low performing teams, better visualizations of data distribution and graphs illustrating changes over time.
The most important charts and graphs, those that painted a picture of the business as a whole, were created and placed in the upper left. This pattern was made consistent across of the various dashboard views so that readers could reliably locate this information when needed.
RESULT
With these changes in place, the dashboards were now effective storytelling tools, capable of providing both a granular look at the state of this particular aspect of the business as well as a high-level overview suitable for executive review.