Where To Put Data In

An Excel Dashboard -
Report



Where To Put Data In A Dashboard


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is that people are
not engaged with them.
Here in this quick report, you will learn how to design your dashboards in a way
so that every user (if its human) is engaged from the very beginning.
Come with me because if your end-users dont consume your reports, they
wont play with data and wont explore new angles of data, and you will make a
disservice to decision-makers.
Your dashboard interface should communicate data to users, with simple
interactions: pressing buttons, scrolling, etc. But making things simple and
easy is not enough
If you want to keep people aware of whats shown in the dashboard, you must
consider some human limitations
In this report you will learn how to consider our biased attention, so you create
engaging (not distracting) dashboards for every user.
Lets start
You are now reading this left side of my text and now this right one.
Our western writing paradigm imposes some visual patterns
We direct our attention from left to right and top to bottom. As a designer you
must consider these attention hot spots. See the attention heat map below



Where To Put Data In A Dashboard


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Read the dashboard below

You probably read Read this next first because is in a hot attention spot. You
probable didnt read Read this first as the given text indicated. This proves
that we first move our head and eyes in particular directions and then we read.
Our attention is conditioned to look at some places and in some particular
order.
We should take advantage of these reading patterns to design our dashboards
and place the right data at the right place.

Where To Put Data In A Dashboard


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Research shows that our Western reading behavior of web content follows the
F rule
1
. See the picture at the right below.

1. Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part
of the content area. This initial element forms the Fs top bar.
2. Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second
horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the
previous movement. This additional element forms the Fs lower bar.
3. Finally, users scan the contents left side in a vertical movement.
We can adapt these findings to our dashboards.


1
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content/
Where To Put Data In A Dashboard


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Now you know that this layout

doesnt have the same effect as this one



Where To Put Data In A Dashboard


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Get some general ideas about how to lay out your dashboard for better
consumption
Example 1:

Example 2:

Where To Put Data In A Dashboard


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Example 3:



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