Tag Archives for " analytics UX "

How to Extend Your UX Skills to Analytics UX

I’m sure everyone has heard the excitement over analytics and how sexy data science is as a career path. Though there is rarely mantion of analytics UX. Analytics is often thought of as highly technical and difficult to get into. That’s not untrue but there are still very high value opportunities that don’t require a background in stats or database design, i.e. analytics UX. Enter the Dashboard Consultant. For the UI/UX Designer, becoming a Dashboard Consultant can follow a well-defined path, as it is a path I have traveled myself and I am going to share my learnings from that journey here and what I think is an optimal path having the experience to reflect upon.

What is a Dashboard Consultant?

A blend between UI/UX, business acumen and aspects of analytics such as data visualization and surface knowledge of data structures and databases are the basic ingredients. All of which can be learned in a matter of weeks to have a basic competence, though mastery will take years. The primary focus is mapping data to business value for the end users and stakeholders. Giving them access to actionable outcomes that either positively changes behavior and/or enables direct action to be taken to improve business outcomes. The closer those outcomes come to increasing profits the better. The role of the Dashboard Consultant is fundamentally to narrow the gap between data and profit through a user interface.

What Skills Do I Need for Analytics UX?

I’m assuming you already have UI/UX Design nailed and that covers a lot as it typically extends over to business acumen. However, a major word of caution here and a lesson I had to painfully learn. Analytics can be highly political and heated. Being overly evangelical about users and UX principles can and often do inflame already volatile situations. My approach is now pragmatic and firmly based in years of experience in application of UX to analytics. For more junior UXers I advise subtly over enthusiasm as you build up your business experience.

The skills you should already have and that will be used (not exhaustive):

  • UX research, interviews, personas
  • Journey mapping
  • Wire-framing and concept design
  • Consulting expertise

All that being said, the main new skills, with an hours estimate to get a basic competence if taught by a pro, that need to be added are:

  • Data visualization best practices – 16 hours
  • Chart selection process (big part of analytics UX) – 20 hours
  • Basic, very basic, knowledge of database structures – 16 hours
  • Facilitation expertise to run the occasional workshop – 16 hours theory with 8 hours of practical application
  • UI capability knowledge of the popular dashboarding tools like QlikView, Qlik Sense, Tableau, Power BI. This is not as hard as it may sound. – 4 hours per tool
  • Optional expertise in developing in one or more of the tools – highly variable

You will note that technical tools of dashboard development are left till last and this is intentional as there are many a person that can develop dashboards, there are very few that can design them well enough to have significant business value and impact. So, if you do have the aptitude to pick up some dashboard development expertise, then well and good. It is not vital. The value is in producing the design that wins. This will be in contrast to much of the prevailing advice out there and I only speak from my own experience as a dashboard consultant, which rarely involves me developing the dashboard. If development is needed I may do it myself, usually not worth my time, or I hand the work over to other contractors or, as is usually the case, the client has their own developers already.

What’s Next?

Be sure to check out the basics of dashboard UI design.

This has been a cursory view of what is needed and there is obviously a lot of detail behind the steps above. If people are interested, I’d be happy to write more on analytics UX and go into some more background of my own journey as well as resources and materials that would constitute the 80-hour investment for such a career upgrade. Interest can be expressed as likes, comments, resharing, tweets @nicksight, etc!

Enterprise Dashboard Layout: Keeping it Simple

There are many ways to approach dashboard layout and design, but I have found value in starting with a fixed layout that enables a basic narrative for rapidly identifying if action is needed and then providing the necessary journey to understand what action is needed. The layout can then be adjusted as necessary.

The Simple Approach to Dashboard Layout

Overall layout has four areas that can largely be standardized across platforms to start making consistent user experiences irrespective if created in Tableau, Qlikview, Qlik Sense, Power BI, etc:

  • Navigation
  • Filters
  • KPIs – should I act?
  • Charts – what action should I take?

Dashboard Layout Introduction-04

How to Tell a Basic Story Through the Dashboard Layout

Let’s take a look at the ideal flow of the generic enterprise dashboard template. Opening the dashboard should land us the on home/summary tab for a specific user/persona. The journey begins by selecting the navigation tabs. From there the user scans the KPIs to get a pulse of the state of the business. Should there be any call to action needed then one of these summary charts will make it easily identifiable, typically by color. More focused exploration can happen on the other tabs of the dashboard, accessible via the navigation tabs.

Dashboard Layout Introduction-05

Should a call to action be needed, but it is not clear exactly what, then the user is visually directed to one or more of the four detailed charts either by color association and/or comments.

Dashboard Layout Introduction-01

Example

In this example we can see the projected revenue for the week is below target. This is indicated by the kpi being orange in color. Scanning to the main dashboard area for more orange lands us on the inventory chart and we can see the stock count is only 200 but we project to sell 5,000 units.

Dashboard Layout Introduction-02

Since we have tied an action to each chart then we know to call a specific number and find out what is happening with the inventory. Do we need to ship more units or is it simply a case of the inventory count being innacurate. Either way, an action is required.

Dashboard Layout Introduction-03

With this rather simple layout of a dashboard you can see how a basic narrative can lead to powerful change. However, it may look simple in the design, but making it simple requires a lot of ground work.

In the next article we will look at the process that can get you there. Be sure to visit the Insight Burger post to see how important design thinking and the UX process is to dashboard design.

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