The primary objective of a dashboard is to communicate data to a certain audience with an intended result. Often, we'll talk about telling the data story. That is, there is a narrative (or multiple narratives) contained within the data that can be communicated to others.
While you can tell a data story with a single visualization or even a series of complex dashboards, a single Tableau dashboard is the most common way to communicate a single story. Each dashboard seeks to tell a story by giving a clear picture of certain information. Before framing the story, you should understand what story the data tells. How you tell the story will depend on numerous factors, such as your audience, the way the audience will access the dashboard, and what response you want to elicit from your audience.
Stephen Few, one of the leading experts in the field of data visualization, defines a dashboard as a visual display of the most important information that's needed to achieve one or more objectives, consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance. This definition is helpful to consider because it places some key boundaries around the data story and the way we will seek to tell it in Tableau. In general, your data story should follow these guidelines:
- The data story should focus on the most important information. Anything that does not communicate or support the main story should be excluded. You may wish to include that information in other dashboards.
- The data story that you tell must meet your key objectives. Your objectives may range from giving information to providing an interface for further exploration, to prompting your audience to take action or make key decisions. Anything that doesn't support your objectives should be reserved for other dashboards.
- The data story should be easily accessible and the main idea should be clear. Depending on your audience, you may wish to explicitly state your conclusions from the data or you may want to guide your audience so that they can draw their own.
When you set out to build a dashboard, you'll want to carefully consider your objectives. Your discovery and analysis should have uncovered various insights into the data and its story. Now, it's your responsibility to package that discovery and analysis into a meaningful communication of the story to your particular audience in a way that meets your objectives and their needs.