So, how do you navigate these challenges and design dashboards that save users’ time? Here’s the playbook we use in our dashboard design services to make dashboards effective and intuitive.

Be Purposeful

First, understand your users’ needs and objectives. What information will they need to complete an action at this point in their user journey? In what context will they be using the dashboard?

Zero in on the purpose of the dashboard to determine its type and the data it’ll display. Overall, dashboards can be grouped into three broad categories:

• Operational: They display real-time metrics for tracking and monitoring purposes

• Analytical: They visualize trends, data insights, and potential issues

• Strategic: They help users track KPIs for strategic goals

Depending on the type of dashboard, your design approach will differ:

• Operational: Bring all the most important data to the top left, avoid too-detailed views

• Analytical: Focus on comparing current data points against their past values

• Strategic: Visualize current and past data points against the targets

Treat Attention as a Limited Resource

Attention is limited, and attention spans are steadily declining. So, enable users to grasp all the essential data at a glance. To that end, structure the dashboard components – tables, graphs, charts, metrics – in F and Z patterns:

Your goal should be to capture the user’s attention and keep it for 5 seconds. That’s known as the 5-second rule.

Select the Essentials

As we mentioned above, your dashboard should include only the most important and relevant data to avoid overwhelming users. But how do you choose that data?

At Fivecube, we prioritize insights over raw data. Insights are more beneficial for the user since they don’t require extra processing and analysis on the user’s part. However, which insights would most relevant depend on the user’s goals and context. That’s why we conduct thorough user research to identify the right insights to include.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

Creative dashboard design is tempting, especially if offering a memorable brand experience is at the top of your priority list. However, we advise limiting your creative dashboard design ideas to microinteractions, color schemes, and fonts. Unusual layouts or controls will only confuse your users.

Make It Responsive

With over half of online traffic coming from mobile devices, making your dashboard easy to view and navigate on any screen isn’t optional. Ensure your dashboard design adapts to the screen size so that the user doesn’t need to zoom in or endlessly scroll.

Be Consistent

Consistency is the foundation of intuitive UI/UX design, and dashboard design is no exception. That goes for the color scheme, fonts, design elements, data visualizations, and more. Create clear guidelines and keep them in a design system.

Design for Flexibility

You can’t cater to every single user’s needs out of the box. Users have different contexts, preferences, and needs, and those may change for the same user with time.

That’s why modern dashboard design has to be customizable. Enable users to tweak their dashboards with filters, drill-down capabilities, and custom data views.

Group by Similarity

Human brains constantly look for patterns. That’s why grouping related data into one section makes for faster data retrieval and processing. The logic behind it, however, should align with that of your users; so, rely on user research to avoid acting on false assumptions.