[TABLEAU] Best Practices For Designing Vizes And -DashBoards

Best Practices for Designing Vizes and Dashboards

Most views and dashboards you create will be seen by other people. Obviously, you want to call attention to your findings and help others investigate and discover their own findings. While every view is different there are a few things that you can keep in mind when evaluating whether your views and dashboards are the most effective.  This is not a complete list but it's a good place to start when publishing or sharing your views. Add Interactivity to Encourage Exploration Whether you're publishing to Tableau Server, embedding Tableau Public views, or emailing workbooks, take advantage of the interactivity of Tableau visualizations. Here are some tips for encouraging your viewers to explore and interact with the views. Turn on Quick Filters Don't forget to turn on quick filters to allow others to control what data is shown in the view. You can turn on quick filters for any field by right-clicking the field in the Data window and selecting Show Quick Filter. Each quick filter can be customized for different types of data. For example, you can show quick filters as multi-select check boxes, single select radio buttons, drop-down lists, sliders, date pickers, and so on. You can also specify whether to include a search button, the "All" option, null controls, etc. Finally, you can edit the title of the quick filter to give your viewers clear instructions for interacting with the shared views. All of these customizations are available on the drop-down menu in the upper right corner of the quick filter card. Turn on Highlighting Use the Highlight button on the toolbar to set up highlighting between views. When highlighting is turned on, a selection in one view will highlight related data in the other views. You can turn on highlighting for all fields or select specific fields. Make Views More Effective for Your Audience After you've sliced and diced the data, go back through and think about the view from your audience's persepective. Is your message clear? Here are some best practice tips for effectively displaying data. Use Custom Tooltips In versions 5.1 and later, you can edit the tooltip for each view. Select Edit > Tooltip to open a rich text editor. The advantage of custom tooltips is that you can remove unnecessary information and use it to highlight key findings in the data. The view below shows both the default tooltip on the left and a custom tooltip on the right. Hover the pointer over a mark to see each. Notice how the custom tooltip calls attention to just the important information and uses formatting to add emphasis. Don't Distract from the Data Be careful that your axes and labels are not distracting from the data. Try changing the fonts to something a bit smaller and gray color to help them fall back and let the data shine. Also select Format > Lines to modify divider lines and borders in the view. Use Titles that Make a Statement Use the titles to state your findings, give context, and guide your audience through the dashboard. Use formatting to visually draw attention to each view. For example, if your dashboard has one main view with several details, consider using formatting to illustrate that hierarchy. This technique is especially useful when you are building a guided analytical experience where views are hidden until some selection has been made. Right-click the title and select Format Title to change the shading and border. Double-click the title to open a rich text editor where you can modify the color, font style, and alignment. Control the Sizing and Layout Consider how your dashboards will be viewed. Are you embedding into a webpage? What size screen is your auidence using? Here are some tips for controlling the sizing and layout of dashboards. Use Layout Containers to Group Related Items Layout Containers were added in version 5.1 and can be used to group related content in a dashboard. Objects in a layout container automatically align and flow together when the dashboard is resized. You can add a horizontal layout container, which aligns objects horizontally, or a vertical layout container for objects that are stacked up and down. Layout containers can be nested within each other and formatted to show a border. Add layout containers by dragging them from the Dashboard window to the dashboard. Use the drop-down menu in the upper right corner of the layout container to format its border. First click Select Layout Container, then click Format Container. Use Fixed Size Dashboards Automatic sizing on a dashboard means that when the window is resized all of the objects in the dashboard are resized too. While this is usually the behavior you want when you are authoring the dashboard, you may want to change to a fixed size dashboard when you share it with others. Think about who will be viewing the dashboard and where. For example, if you are embedding it into a blog or a webpage you probably know the width and height allowed by your page template. Change the size of the dashboard by clicking the Edit link at the bottom of the Dashboard window.   You can select from one of the following types of sizing: Automatic - the dashboard automatically resizes to fill the application window. This is the default behavior. Exactly - the dashboard always remains a fixed size. If the dashboard is larger than the window the dashboard becomes scrollable. Range - the dashboard scales between the specified minimum and maximum sizes, after which scroll bars or white space will display. At Least - the dashboard resizes to fill the window, but will show scroll bars when the window is smaller than the minimum size. At Most - the dashboard resizes to fill the window, but will add white space when the window is larger than the maximum size.

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