Principles of Excel Dashboard Design
Excel dashboards are some form of visual reporting mechanism. Excel dashboards are completely different from your default spreadsheet report that is usually created in excel.
Dashboard reporting based on the key principles should bridge that gap between systems and the information needs of management. More importantly, good dashboard design and data modelling should help information workers and analysts to spend less time with manual excel tasks and more time analysing information.
A single page
If your dashboard contains too much information it will fail to convey the data effectively. Also, the data might end up on more than one page. Remember, our aim is to communicate a message about the data, don’t include every bit of data in a dashboard. The information displayed should be the most relevant and within the left and upper part of the screen. This will depend on the purpose of the dashboard. The other point here is that if something is off-page, then it can’t be viewed quickly. It might not be seen at all. The other reason for this is when you print your dashboard, it should also fit to a single page.
Not complicated
Dashboards are about communicating data quickly using dashboard components and good use of visual attributes. The data analysis should be seen as a separate process or layer. The dashboard is the final layer which your audience get to see. Everything else is to help you process the data quickly. Don’t include fancy 3D charts, logos, pictures and gauges, which don’t communicate key messages well and take up too much space. Excel dashboards should help managers decide if any further action or drilling down is required.
Priority of dashboard components
Adding extra interactivity to your dashboard, such as being able to select a certain region or being able to drill down can make a huge difference in the perceived usability.
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