Make it simple
Lately, I am quite interested in how to fit as much information as possible in a small dashboard without making it too crowded. That’s why I have been tried in Tableau to replicate the KPI card from Power BI in the article “KPI cards in Tableau – an idea from Power BI“.
From the same class of small amazing visualization takes part the sparklines as well. And from here in the below dashboard I tried to combine them both.
A simple KPI card (in this case without the target) and a sparkline below to see the annual trend:
It’s a pretty simple visualization, it takes not so much space and you can have it with 2 dimensions.
More dimensions…
But wait … Tableau has the 3rd dimension right there … the tooltip. And I have decided to use it to bring in the dashboard more information and make it more interactive.
*Tooltips are details that appear when you rest the pointer over one or more marks in the view. Tooltips also offer convenient tools to quickly filter or remove a selection, select marks that have the same value or view underlying data.
The dashboard
When I started to design this dashboard I had in my mind 3 things:
– limited space
– a lot of information
– and to keep it simple
To comply with all of this I have used:
– KPI cards that helped me to keep it clear,
– sparklines that use little space and embed a lot of information inside,
– tooltips to have a different view of the KPIs,
– and at the bottom, I have reserved some space for details in plain text accompanied by small data bars. And because I didn’t want to focus on them I have made them gray.
Hope you like it and you will use my strategy further 🙂
If you are using a mobile device click here to see the dashbaord as it is.
