There is dashboards everywhere from train station timetables to a well known car dashboard. There is dashboards everywhere! Our next project is to create an infographic dashboard which outlines a week in my life. We do this to help break down the more complex of data into more aesthetically pleasing bite size pieces of data which people can understand more easily. In our case we are using dashboards to display a range of information about ourselves whether we were working towards a specific goal that week or monitoring things such as our heartrate or eating patterns.
I started off looking for some inspiration of existing dashboard layouts on Pinterest. I like to do this as it helps generate some ideas for my own project but also allows me to see what the common layout that is used is and is well understood and creates a good user experience and is easily understood.
The common theme of all these dashboards is the left hand side navigation bar which lets you switch between dashboards. In my designs I would like to implement this as people just know it is there by natural muscle memory so I wouldn’t want to change it and it also allows a nice consistent layout to be created. However I would like to make it look more interesting than just a vertical bar by either using iconography or visual elements.
Although we are looking at apps for desktop or tablet screens, I also took a look at existing applications that use dashboards both on mobile and desktop. This will help me not only look at layouts but the type of ways these applications visualise their data through charts and graphs but also other less common ways.
Having a look at dashboards which is used by millions of people has allowed me to realise there is no specific layout that they all use but they all do not look cluttered and use lots of spacing so the data and assisting text can be read clearly. It is also good to see the variation of diagrammatic information across all the different dashboards too as 2 do not look the same or display data the same way.
I started off by creating simple wireframe sketches that outline some layout ideas that I could use for my dashboard design. I did not add any real data or information into my sketches as I just wanted to create a basic idea of how it may look.
To help create inspiration and ideas for how I want to display individual data on my dashboard I had a look at some data visualisation examples from existing creators. I started off looking at David McCandless as I really like how he displays his data and he does it in so many different ways.
What I like the most is his use of map and pinpointing locations. I think this would be a great idea that I could implement for my where I travelled visualisation except with a map of Northern Ireland rather than the world. I also really like the uses of world clouds and bubbles as this can create a more unique touch to my dashboard than just a load of standard bar charts as these can become boring and less informative.