Follow our UX team's recommendations and guidelines to leverage the UX to its fullest potential.
Desktop best practices
Our top five:
- Minimize time to decision
- Progressive disclosure
- Smart grouping
- Help and guide
- Consistency
Minimize time-to-decision
Focus on the outcome your users are attempting to arrive at and optimize for it.
- Prioritize key KPIs at the top of pages, or on landing pages
- Provide easy access to key reports and analysis tools
- Don’t overwhelm
- What decision are they trying to make?
- What will they do with that decision?
- How does this inform the pages and features needed?
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Executive Summary Board |
Progressive disclosure
Presenting data incrementally avoids overwhelming users by keeping it simple upfront.
- Present data in simple, digestible chunks
- Allow users to drill into more detail by linking summary data in cards to detail data in worksheets
- Place useful items in “Additional Insights”
- Data-dense and busy pages can overwhelm non-experts; keep it simple by eliminating what’s not needed
- This is especially important on mobile as there’s even less real estate
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Summary on a Board
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Smart grouping
Grouping helps the user to make sense of what they’re seeing.
- Group related data together in containers
- Use easy to understand categories
- Use text cards to provide headings if necessary
- Use smart grouping to improve the mobile experience
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Smart Grouping |
Help and guide
Provide hints to guide users on what to do next.
- Use text and instructions where needed
- Use text cards for pages intended for less frequent users
- Use tooltips for frequent users
- Provide custom tooltips to help describe visualizations
- Don’t overwhelm with verbose language
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Board With Tooltips
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Consistency
Consistent design e.g. terms, colors, and layout makes the experience more predictable.
- Keep links and target page names consistent to avoid confusion
- Follow consistent naming conventions
- Use consistent colors and order for metrics
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Do's & Don'ts
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Mobile best practices
If your users are likely to be using your app regularly on mobile, think about the mobile experience first.
- Link cards to more detailed data to avoid overwhelming users
- Avoid displaying huge grids on boards
- On board pages, place text card headings across the entire page
- Use one page for web and mobile, to reduce duplication and maintenance
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Desktop Board Page to Mobile |
Author AJ Balsamo.
Contributing author Monica Girel.