Principles Of Excel Dashboard Design

Developing Excel dashboards require the use of the more advanced features that excel provides such as VBA and pivottables. They are different from traditional excel reports. Excel is a cost effective solution in the development of executive and operational dashboards.

Dashboard reporting based on the key principles should bridge that gap between systems and the information needs of management. More importantly, good dashboard design and data modelling should help information workers and analysts to spend less time with manual excel tasks and more time analysing information.

One page display

Don't clutter your excel dashboard with unnecessary visual elements and data. If it looks too busy, then it will fail to communicate the data effectively. We are trying to communicate a message about the data. Don't include every bit of data in a dashboard. The information should show progress towards key objectives and priorities. The other point here is that if something is out with your line of sight, then it can't be viewed quickly or possibly missed altogether. When you print your dashboard, it should also fit to a single page.

Simple to understand

An excel dashboard should help to visually identify trends and patterns quickly without confusion. This means that there should not be any visual competition or chart junk present. Fancy formatting distracts users from the key messages. This includes fancy 3D charts, logos, pictures and gauges, which don't communicate key messages well and take up too much space. Visual reports should help managers decide if any further action or drilling down is required. The use of visual attributes should be used to aid visual perception.

Use visual attributes

Adding extra interactivity to your dashboard, such as being able to select a certain region or being able to drill down can make a huge difference in the perceived usability.