
Best Practices for Creating Useful Dashboards - airguitardesign
https://dataschool.com/courses/building-a-dashboard-best-practices/lessons/the-introduction/
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Bishonen88
The chart type picture is somewhat small resolution (at least thats how it
looks on a 4k screen).

There's a recommendation of a pie chart in there - stopped reading there. /s
Seriously, though, even when it comes to a distribution to a composition, I'd
go with a (vertical) bar chart - there's plenty of literature/comments against
the use of pie charts.

"The only thing worse than a pie chart... are two pie charts"

I'm not sure if I missed it whilst glancing over the pages, but I didn't see
any mention of interactivity. I think that especially nowadays, being able to
slice-and-dice is quite important for a dashboard. There's so many angles from
which the data can be looked at.

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timmiller716
Hi, thanks for the feedback here. We mentioned the interactive display piece
in the section on sharing the dashboard. Interactivity is important for a
dashboard, especially in this day and age.

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xapata
I noticed you didn't reply to the pie-chart feedback. I'll second that
criticism: pie charts are unwise.

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timmiller716
Agree, pie charts may have a narrow, if any, use case, however, some people
LOVE them. Maybe not as much as I love commas, apparently.

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xapata
Artists like pie charts because they're colorful and break the monotony of
right angles. Scientists dislike pie charts because they don't convey
information well. Who is your audience?

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airguitardesign
I totally understand the feeling/frustration of pie charts being overused and
often where they shouldn't be, and for the most part, I agree. I think it's
always a good idea to stop and ask, "can a different chart convey the
information better?" And the answer will almost always be "absolutely" when
looking at a pie chart, no denying that. I will throw these two cases out for
consideration of where a pie chart may be acceptable though:

1) As you mentioned, they're visually pleasing. No, that doesn't make up for
when it's hard to read data, but I think a case can be made for snagging
people's attention and getting eyeballs on a report you send out. If a pie
chart is the hook that gets people interested in your data, maybe it's a
sacrifice worth making. Artists aren't the only people who can find things
visually appealing.

2) Basically, storytelling. There's no rule that says you can't show the
same/similar data in different ways to help tell a good story. In some
situations, it could make sense to start with a high-level visual breakdown of
a group, and then use more detailed charts to get into the details you want to
focus on (like how different segments relate). Or maybe the story I'm trying
to tell has a ton of sub-groups which all pale in comparison to one dominant
one. I think a pie chart visualizes that situation (where exact details aren't
important) pretty well.

I ultimately just don't think it's a binary thing, where only artists will
enjoy having a little visual variety and that any and every pie chart is a
100% waste of everyone's time. Most of the time, they're silly and an excuse
for different shapes and colors, but I like to think even pie charts have
their place in data visualization.

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powvans
Site appears to be experience the hug of death, Google cache:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rCmcbq...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rCmcbqJNw2gJ:https://dataschool.com/courses/building-
a-dashboard-best-practices/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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timmiller716
Thanks for the heads up here. We just took a look and things seem to be
operating normal now.

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codemac
Voiceover: It wasn't.

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sbr464
Thanks for the write up!

Side note,

Adding this css would help with scrolling on mobile.

    
    
      overflow-y: scroll;
      -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch;

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airguitardesign
Nice, thanks. I'm still figuring out this WP plugin we're using for the
guides, I'll give this a shot. Much appreciated.

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ProxCoques
While this is good in the sense that 99% of dashboards are worthless drek and
anything that helps that is good, the examples given here are surprisingly
poor. Even a cursory reading of the book they themselves recommend (Stephen
Few's "Information Dashboard Design") would know this.

In fact, it appears the author may not have even read Few's book because they
fail to mention some fundamental points about dashboard design that need to be
understood if the design isn't going to just be a form of simple data analysis
tool.

Overall, if you're interested in dashboard design, I'd give this course a miss
and just read Stephen Few's book on the subject.

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airguitardesign
My teammate, Tim, put together this guide of tips for creating a simple and
useful dashboard. We've been working on this new site/team putting together
helpful articles for business users to learn about using data for work.
Comments welcome!

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kthejoker2
As a long time dashboard designer, I love this site

[https://www.data-to-viz.com/](https://www.data-to-viz.com/)

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stocktech
Best Practices or "Building Dashboards for Dummies?"

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airguitardesign
The guide is meant to be fairly "intro-level". Did you feel the points AREN'T
best practices, or where you hoping for more information?

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philipodonnell
Boo. No pie charts.

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airguitardesign
Never ever?

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ProxCoques
Almost never, and only when you know exactly what you are doing:
[https://eagereyes.org/pie-charts](https://eagereyes.org/pie-charts)

