Dashboard Critique & Redesign
This portfolio item was completed as part of my Advanced Business Intelligence class. For this I found a sample report made available by Microsoft on on GitHub. This workbook and related data is provided by Obvience. Within the raw file found on GitHub, I have focused on the Actives vs. Separations dashboard which demonstrates the information about active employees compared to employee terminations. The purpose of this dashboard is to track and observe trends in employee retention and workforce stability across regions, genders and age groups. It would enable HR strategy by highlighting areas of concern like a specific characteristic of the employee turnover, to prompt further investigation and support workforce planning.​
Most of the flaws are easy to ratify by implementing certain best practices for dashboard designing. We would want our report to focus on key insights, while being concise, consistent and engaging. Ensuring that interactivity is efficiently used and so is the screen space is critical.
Once you click on "View Interactive Content", it displays page 2 to with my redesign. Page 3 contains the original design and Page 1 has the attributions.
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​Try comparing both the designs and see if you can tell the difference.
Despite supporting multidimensional data analysis, this report has its many flaws. Some of them are visible, like missing chart titles, inconsistency in legends, unclear purpose of the report as well as use of unfamiliar terminology. Moreover, the waterfall chart uses colors outside the theme and the instructions for report drill down are not visible or clear. These charts are also tightly packed without a proper structure making the appearance very cluttered and overwhelming, reducing the readability.
Other flaws can be seen upon deeper dive into the report. An example is use of redundant charts and only emphasize different variables with use of a filter or same variable is shown multiple times using different chart types. You can identify that by checking the filters and data used for both charts. Lastly, There is no explicit explanation or context for the dashboard’s overall goal, such as what key questions it aims to answer or who the target audience is.​
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The final redesign continues to communicate original insights in a much more simple, effective yet engaging manner to allow a company’s HR team to make informed strategic decisions. New design is cleaner, aligning visuals for consistent storytelling and enhancing user experience by addressing original flaws in the design. It does so by focusing on the 5 basics of designing: Layout, Aesthetics, Content Clarity, Navigation and Interaction, Lasting Engagement.