Do not create your dashboards with Power BI — Draw them first!
Hey friends 👋 — In this article, we are going to learn to create dashboards from scratch! from where do we start? how to control layouts and design?
Before starting, just wanted to mention that this article is inspired by this amazing medium article: My Tableau dashboards sucked — until I started drawing them first by John McAllister. I highly recommend checking it out if you are a Tableau BI developer.
Just like writing, visualization is not something that you successfully accomplish the first time. It’s a process that requires a lot of trials and fixes. Publishers usually ask writers to submit the first draft, and they expect this draft to have a lot of mistakes or repeated and unorganized ideas. The same applies to dashboards/reports. Each dashboard you work on is like a new book.
in another article Power BI tricks and tips. My first tip was “🎨Don’t start your dashboard directly with Power BI” because I had to learn this the hard way. I’ve done so many dashboards not ready or complete or just missing a lot of key design principles that I didn’t notice the first time.
Tools to use:
There are a lot of tools that give you the ability to draft or create a mockup for a dashboard. I sometimes use whiteboard from Microsoft to sketch a plan, but in the end, I use Adobe XD to create the wireframes with the help of Adobe plugins to create charts and visualization components (You can easily install chart plugins by searching in the plugin search box). My favorite charts plugin is ChartPlugin. Another method I use when I don’t feel like sketching or planning on my laptop is sketching on paper, it works perfectly and it makes you think critically about every decision you’re making. John McAllister in his article “My Tableau dashboards sucked — until I started drawing them first” explains that using pen and paper is the perfect method to draw your dashboards “Drawing visualizations requires you to think about why you are modeling something a certain way. It forces you to put thought into every single line, every pencil stroke, and every erasure.” and I totally agree with that. I recall the times when I drew my dashboards on paper: The process was seamless and the dashboards were simple, practical, and user-friendly.. unlike designing on my computer because it’s very easy to drag and drop items or move charts and components around.
Conclusion:
Creating dashboards may seem an easy thing to do, but it’s not. it requires you to be patient, diligent, and open-minded. another critical part of designing dashboards is asking for feedback and presenting it to colleagues and friends as you may forget some critical information in your model.
If you struggle with data visualization, pick a pen a paper, change your place, go to a nearby café, or a meeting room, and just think about the requirements and the problem.. and you will see that it is way easier to start!
Do you have other ideas or methods to visualize dashboards? please share in the comments sections.
Thanks for reading!
