As part of the Enterprise Data Analytics Team, I engage in a diverse range of data visualization and information design projects. I worked on creating a reporting & dashboard design system to standardize the report development and design process. This has evolved from documenting principles and styles that have proven effective across our projects thus far. Its purpose is to ensure consistency in our work and create a better experience for our users.Â
The goal of this design standardization is to ensure consistency in our analytics products and share best practices, offering valuable insights into data presentation and serving as a helpful reference for other teams in our organization seeking answers to their own data visualization challenges.Â
Dashboard Sample Page
Drill Down Sample Page
My Role & Process
I initiated and led the creation and development of this design system with our Enterprise Data Analytics Design team of 3.
Initial Discovery & UX Research: A large part of this research was creating a comparative analysis and understanding how our design standardization works for multiple BI tools such as Power BI and Tableau. I also conducted stakeholder interviews and collaborated with users who create reports to identify and define product needs.
Product Design: I led the design and socialized our initial drafts with the team and internal stakeholders.Â
Identifying the Problem
There were two main problems with the current creation of reports:
1. The core issue we faced was the lack of standardized processes for report creation across teams. The diverse usage of various BI tools among teams added complexity, leading to inconsistency in the appearance and user experience of the dashboards produced. While creating this design standardization we had to consider the tools used to develop the dashboard.
2. The organization's current design system, initially developed for customer-facing applications, proved unsuitable for handling the demands of data-intensive applications including reports/dashboards.
đź’ˇHow can we unify analytics and provide clear guidelines and best practices for development teams, while delivering a thoughtful user experience for our end users of reports?
User Pain Points & Needs
Cluttered Dashboards
Users find extra information distracting from the important data they need to focus on, leading to difficulty in identifying key insights.Â
→ Users need critical information to be prioritized and allow for drill downs for supporting data.
Navigation Challenges
Users struggle to navigate through the dashboard due to unclear navigation structures. This can lead to difficulties in finding relevant information efficiently.Â
→ Users need a consistent way to navigate between different pages of reports.​​​​​​​
Ineffective Data Visualization
Poorly designed charts, graphs, or visualizations can obscure important trends or make it challenging to interpret data accurately.Â
→ Users need to look at the right visualizations to be able to quickly make decisions. The text & color in the charts should be easy to read & should be able differentiate the categories in the charts.
Limited Interactivity
Dashboards that lack interactive features such as drill-down capabilities or filters may limit executives' ability to explore data and gain deeper insights.Â
→ Users need the ability to interact with data - look further into a specific topic through filtering and tooltips.
Dashboard Examples
While I was working on defining the dashboard standardization, I was leading the design of two other dashboards that provided more context to requirements that would be important to include in the standardization. Below is an overview of the dashboards:
Example #1: Technology Infrastructure Dashboard
The Technology Infrastructure Dashboard is a monitoring tool that brings together critical metrics to provide a comprehensive view to keep track of the different technologies and their statuses so users can identify potential risks early.
User Need: As a IT Senior Manager, I need to understand technology statuses at a high level to make business decisions and identify risks. The existing report does not provide that high level overview that senior management needs.
Before
After (MVP Solution)
Example #2: Contract Dashboard
The Contract Dashboard acts as a tracker to visualize the contract(s), their endpoints, and their stages. The goal for this project was to automate the tracking and visualization of vendor contracts, their statuses, endpoints, and stages. This helped streamline contract management, enhance data accuracy, improve efficiency in managing vendor relationships, and optimize cost savings. For the MVP, the Contract Dashboard Objectives were:
1. Visualize subscriptions: Utilizing visualization to translate data into a format that makes the data easier to understand, identify patterns and opportunities, and provide context.
2. Assist in decision making: Reducing and organizing the data into a digestible format that would cut down on clutter which can lead to stronger data-driven decision making.
3. Optimize savings: Through the tracker, performing analysis and executing decisions that would assist in business savings
Before
After (MVP Solution)
Solution
Below is an overview that highlights a portion of the dashboard standardization.
Conclusion
Our reporting standardization serve as a valuable reference tool for report creators, streamlining their workflow while simultaneously ensuring a cohesive and polished visual identity across our suite of analytic products for end users. Phase 1 of the design standardization were handed off to different teams in the organization for them to test on their own applications they were working on and received overall very positive feedback from them saying that it helped them drastically speed up their process for creating reports. We also received feedback from the users of the reports commenting that they've noticed a more consistent UX which makes it easier and faster to complete tasks. I am continuing to iterate on the standardization as we receive more feedback and test out different components.