Original subtitles

Instructor: Awright, so we've talked about

individual types of visuals

and we've teased this concept of reports and dashboards,

but what exactly do we mean by that?

Well, by our definition,

dashboards are analytics tools designed to do three things:

consolidate data for multiple sources,

track key metrics at a glance and most importantly,

facilitate data-driven storytelling and decision making.

So businesses are typically working

with data from all sorts of different sources.

You may have product-specific details in one place,

you may be tracking gross revenue

in your finance or accounting tools.

Maybe you've got transactional records feeding

from the point of sale,

or maybe have some customer demographic data

from a CRM system.

Now, of course, these are just a few examples,

but what we're talking about here

is consolidating all of this information

into a single, centralized, user-facing tool

which we're calling a dashboard.

Okay, so now we're clear on the definition.

Next up, let's talk about our dashboard design framework.

We like to break things out into six steps

and we're not gonna cover all of these in depth

like we do in our thinking like an analyst course,

but I want to introduce it at a high level here

because we'll be keeping this framework in mind

as we work on our Adventure Works dashboard

throughout this section of the course.

So the framework includes defining the purpose,

who is it designed for,

what are you trying to communicate?

Then it's all about choosing the right metrics,

presenting that data effectively,

eliminating clutter and noise using layout

to focus attention and finally,

wrapping it all into a clear story.

So to summarize here,

a well-designed dashboard should serve a distinct purpose

for a distinct audience.

It should use clear and effective metrics and visuals,

and it should provide a simple, intuitive user experience.

And as you're building dashboards,

the types of questions you wanna consider,

just like the three questions we just covered,

who are the end-users of the dashboard?

What are their key business goals

and their objectives and incentives?

What are the most important questions

that they need answers to,

and how can I present this information

as clearly as I possibly can?

And I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes here.

It's typically used

in the context of user experience design,

but I think it applies really well

to data visualization as well,

which is, "Perfection is achieved

not when there's nothing more to add,

but when there's nothing left to take away."

Great reminder that clarity and simplicity is always better

than complexity when it comes to Data Viz.

So now with these key questions

and with this dashboard design framework in mind,

let's shift gears, revisit the project prompt

for the course, and start to sketch out

what our Adventure Works report should look like,

and how we can start to put it together.