Traditional BI dashboards utilise traditional methods of showing numbers and trends conveying the bigger picture of what the persona consuming the dashboard needed to know at that moment. Different use cases called for different behaviours of data and dashboard consumption but the over all methodologies remained the same:
Use of the inverted pyramid, start with immediate insights and takeaways and slowly show more detail and granularity
don't show too much information, you don’t want to overwhelm the viewer and lose adoption. Use about 10 widgets on avg
Don’t try to show more than 2-3 KPIs per dashboard, each KPI will require 3-5 widgets, again don’t overwhelm the user with too much information
Top-to-bottom & left-to-right - design your dashboard with priority from the top left corner to the bottom right, just like you read a newspaper
We’ve recently introduced new research-backed tools that allow you to design more engaging dashboards with much more information and yet without overwhelming viewers, basically more insights with less commotion.
Reimagining dashboard storytelling with two powerful new additions to our plugin library
Our new Sisense plugins allow a dashboard and the widgets which compose it to be more interactive, to present more information or to take action on these new insights on demand, as the data consumer progresses in their insight mining, using methods such as progressive disclosure or parallel storytelling paths to show a much broader picture than what was once the standard.
1. Present more information in every widget with Advanced Indicator
The new Advanced Indicator plugin allows you to present several values, a trend icon and a sparkline, all completely interactive, with conditional formatting, and all this in a single widget, a single piece of a complex dashboard. This is almost like a complete traditional dashboard in 1 widget! Many of our users use several such indicators, sometimes up to 10 or more in a single dashboard and present a sort of ‘scorecard’ dashboard.
2. Let viewers control what they see with Widget Controller
Another concept we created at QBeeQ which is the essence of our Self-Service Analytics mindset is widget-data control. Basically allowing viewers to control their own widgets’ data and structure on their own, thus empowering them to be masters of their own ad-hoc analytics, reducing their dependance on the dashboard designers or admins, and adding a substantial amount of flexibility to their data discovery process.
The Widget Controller allows viewers to switch the dimensions such as chart axes or break by’s, table columns and rows, or other query structures. It also allows viewers to switch between measures or values, so if a widget initially showed the breakdown of sales by country, the viewer can very easily switch that to sales by client and then perhaps to cost by client. All within no more than 3 clicks. The Widget Controller also allows adding a break-by switcher, date granularity and chart type switcher ALL IN ONE!
What are these plugins good for?
Using these tools and others allows data designers and dashboard builders to create much more complex data apps without making things too complex at first glance, reducing the risk of immediate abandonment but keeping them interesting and powerful enough to bring much more added value to business.
If until today, a single dashboard could focus on 1-2 KPIs spanning across 8-10 widgets, today’s tools allows designers to create much more robust dashboards with 4-5 KPIs with the same amount of widgets, so as not to breach the traditional UX guidelines, yet adding more value.
Get started now!
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