Data dashboard often turn into an opportunity to dump meaningless information on users. A quick visual example of how not to approach this, and a suggested solution.
This is what I saw today when I opened up our QuickBooks online dashboard:
It’s supposed to be a quick snapshot of invoices. And it should be. But instead its a tiny little gem of confusion.
This graphic gets it all wrong.
A dashboard exists only for this reason: to provide the most important ‘actionable’ information in an easily digestible manner. All kinds of requirements flow from this. It should not be any more complicated than necessary. There should be no extraneous verbiage. Color, size, and shape differences all matter.
Here are some simple fixes to start:
If nothing else, it’s less confusing.
For every piece of additional information added you need to ask yourself, what is this communicating, and what will we do with this communicated information?
Published: August 27, 2014
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