Design Principles You Should Use When Making Excel Dashboards

Introduction

Excel dashboards provide the ability to quickly analyze vast amounts of data and present it in a visually appealing way. This form of data analysis gives decision makers the ability to quickly interpret data, identify trends, and make important decisions. Using the right design principles when creating Excel dashboards can greatly improve their effectiveness and ensure you get the most out of them.

In this blog post, we are going to look at some of the design principles you should use when making Excel dashboards. We will cover the benefits, overview of design principles, and some examples of how they can be used.

Contrast

Contrast can play a big role in making your Excel dashboard visually appealing. Contrast helps draw the viewer's eyes to the data that is the most important in the dashboard. To help enhance the dashboard's overall aesthetics, it is important to incorporate contrast in the design.

Highlight Important Data

You should be sure to include contrasting elements to highlight the most important data that should be seen by the viewer. Adding bold or italic font can be an effective way to make certain words stand out. Another way to emphasize data is to make use of contrasting font sizes and contrasting colors.

Use Colors Sparingly

People often make the mistake of overdoing the use of color in their Excel dashboard. Color can be a powerful tool, but too many colors can have a negative impact on the viewer’s experience. It is best to pick one or two main colors and use them sparingly. You should also look to take advantage of black and white shades to ensure a clean and consistent look.

Consistency

Dashboard design can become convoluted when the designer uses a variety of colors, fonts and design elements. Consistency is a design element for components of Excel dashboards, as well as for the entire dashboard. The designer should be consistent with the use of color, fonts, and other elements to make the dashboard look neat and organized.

Maintain uniformity in colors

A designer should create a few visual rules while using colors. The designer can decide to use muted colors such as blue, green and beige, or the designer can use brightly colored elements. The key is to keep the colors consistent throughout the dashboard. This helps to give the dashboard an overall feeling of a cohesive piece.

Structure the design in a uniform way

The structure of an Excel dashboard should also be consistent. Designers should take into consideration the order and alignment of the dashboard’s components, such as graphs, grids, diagrams, and tables. Establishing a uniform design approach allows for a more cohesive dashboard overall.

• Use a consistent color palette for the dashboard.
• Keep the font size and style consistent across the dashboard.
• Make sure the graphs and tables are aligned properly.
• Position elements of the dashboard in a manner that provides a logical flow.

Space

Designing a great Excel dashboard involves making sure you use best practices when choosing the space your elements will occupy. Here are some concepts you should consider:

Ensure there is enough negative space

Negative space can be used to separate elements or to make certain components stand out in a design. Negative space is an incredibly powerful tool in creating visual hierarchy and emphasis on certain elements. A lack of negative space in a design will lead to an overcrowded and cluttered feeling, as well as a dizzying experience for the user.

Avoid over-crowding of elements

Another important principle of using space in a design is avoiding overcrowding. Keeping a balance between whitespace and design elements is important in making a design easily readable, easy to follow, and easy to interact with. This can be easier said than done when making an Excel Dashboard, as repetitive data can quickly cause a design to feel cramped.

To avoid this outcome, you can use creative placement of elements and subtle yet effective usage of negative space. Additionally, you can look into incorporating more creative visualizations, as these can help keep the user engaged, as well as free up needed space.

Readability

Readability is key when creating an Excel dashboard. You want users to be able to easily identify and understand what the dashboard is communicating. Here are some principles to help ensure that users can quickly understand the data being presented.

Choose Appropriate Font Sizes and Colors

Using a font size that is too small or too large and bright colors that clash can make it difficult for readers to quickly and accurately interpret the dashboard's information. To achieve readability, use font sizes that are easy to read and match each other. In addition, pick color combinations that are pleasing to the eye and complement each other.

Use Text Hierarchy for Easy Identification

Using text hierarchies helps to establish the main pieces of information in the dashboard, as well as its subsections. By adding titles and subtitles, you can not only organize your dashboard better, but also quickly break it down into manageable chunks.

• Titles serve to clarify the main focus of the dashboard
• Subtitles present additional information related to the main focus
• Brief descriptions explain the meaning of each item on the dashboard

By taking these simple steps, users of your Excel dashboard can quickly and accurately glean information from it.

Visualization

Making an Excel dashboard visually appealing is important as it gives users a better view of the data and displays it more effectively. Visuals go a long way in displaying numerical data in a concise and concise way, allowing viewers to quickly grasp the message that the data is conveying. Here are a few tips to help display data with visuals:

Make the dashboard visually appealing

When building a dashboard, it's important to make sure that it looks nice and is easy to read. This means using the right color palettes to make visuals look vibrant and attractive, as well as making sure all the visuals are laid out in an organized and logical way. Additionally, depending on the type of data that is going to be displayed, it might be beneficial to use different types of visuals such as graphs, tables, and charts to best showcase the data.

Use visualization to represent data effectively

Visuals are a great way to represent data in a more effective way, as they are much easier to interpret than numerical data alone. To ensure that data is displayed effectively, one should make sure to use the right visual for the job, such as using a line chart to track a trend over time or a bar chart to compare different data points. Additionally, make sure to keep visuals concise and focused, as this helps viewers to quickly interpret the data that is being conveyed.

Conclusion

Design principles are essential when designing Excel dashboards. To ensure the dashboards are user-friendly, understandable and accurate, the following principles should be taken into consideration: creating consistency and flow, using the most appropriate charts, consistently labeling visuals, creating an intuitive interaction experience and providing context with appropriate titles.

With the use of these principles, Excel dashboards can be organized and strong, leading to great data story-telling. Data-driven organizations can benefit from well-crafted Excel dashboards, as they offer clarity, high user engagement and improved analysis.

By ensuring design principles are used in the creation of Excel dashboards, the end user can be provided with the full potential of the data.