When it comes to designing custom visuals in Power BI, it is all about how to enhance the user’s ability to interact with the visuals to understand, enjoy, and utilize them. To achieve that, here are some useful strategies that you can employ.
1. Avoid Complication.
Refrain from bombarding users with excessive information all at once. Decide on the main idea you wish to articulate and convey that without providing unnecessary context. You can incorporate neat shapes and appropriate labeling, and all other forms of backdrops are discouraged. This enables the users to comprehend what they are viewing without being confused about the content.
2. Choose the Correct Visual Type
Always ensure that the visuals used correspond properly to the data. For instance, when the purpose is to measure comparisons among groups of related data, it is recommended to use bar or column charts. Line charts are appropriate for depicting data that changes with time. The right visual cuts down on users’ effort to try to figure out the insights from the data even without elaboration.
3. Interactive Characteristics
Finally, interactivity can enhance the fun aspect of the experience. Allow users to click on the different parts of the visual, for example, to filter out certain data or go deeper for more information. Power BI comes with inbuilt interactivity, so embellish it with tooltips, slicers, and drill-throughs so that users can enjoy the data at their own pace.
4. Uniformity in Presentation
Utilize the same color schemes, fonts, and overall layouts for all the visuals in your report. This improves the overall appearance and helps the users efficiently utilize the report without getting disoriented. Be wise in the use of colors; tinting too many things out tends to get the reader distracted, so it’s advisable to use one or two striking colors to draw attention with the rest of the colors muted.
5. Put Performance First
There are times that the use of custom visuals can lead to a drop in the performance of your report when they are elaborate. Bearing this in consideration, remember to optimize your data models and visuals so that performance is affected as little as possible. Where feasible, use nongranular data rather than raw data, and where possible, restrict the number of visuals on a single page, as this will induce delays in opening the report.
6. Design Principles
It is essential to consider the accessibility of your bespoke visuals. This means including alt text for images and any other visual elements, ensuring sufficient contrast between the text and background, making sure the colors used are easy to distinguish even by color-blind individuals, and so on.
On the other hand, one can also create a Power BI report that looks good and is easy to maneuver for insight by simplifying the design, selecting appropriate visuals, and incorporating some level of interaction.
