Dashboard for Power BI

BETC Havas is an agency that works with various different clients from distinct segments and who all have very specific business goals. I was approached by them to develop a comprehensive design system for their Power BI dashboards with the objective of creating a consistent, user-friendly, and visually appealing interface that would enhance data comprehension and drive better decision-making across various departments. They wanted the dashboards to speak to each client's needs individually, but without losing their own brand identity in the process.

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One of the main challenges in this project was the inconsistent design of the preexisting dashboards. Since they were developed by different teams for different clients, there was a lack of uniformity in design elements and overall visual identity, which meant I had to start the design system from scratch rather than use preexisting elements. Additionally, Power BI was a tool I was unfamiliar with and which has a lot of customizable settings, like colours and visuals, giving me a wide array of assets to take into consideration. Similarly, there was also the aspect of scalability to keep in mind: I needed to design a system that could easily scale and adapt to the evolving needs of the agency's clients.

In this project, I was unable to contact the stakeholders directly due to the sensitivity of the data involved, so all my research had to come from secondhand sources. I watched a lot of instructional videos in order to familiarize myself with the tool and I also contacted other professionals who had created similar design systems and styleguides for Power BI. This helped me to identify best practices and potential pitfalls I could encounter during the development of the Design System.

For the development of the actual Design System, I separated the groups of elements and loosely followed the Atomic Design system by categorizing them in Tokens, Icons, Grids and Components.

Within each page, I added an explanation of what that element was and how to use it, along with an extra page with application examples and a guide on how to use the file, since the end-users of the Design System wouldn’t necessarily know how to use Figma.

The elements themselves were made to follow the agency’s brand identity: the colours were inspired by their brand, but with an extra step to take into account their use in the graph visuals so as not to make any information inaccessible, and the fonts were also chosen to be similar to their brand’s. I chose to use system fonts to ensure that they would always open properly in the client’s device without needing to install a custom font, which would potentially make the dashboard lose its structure and visual appeal if the font did not load.

A lot of care was taken to make the DS scalable and easy to reproduce. Another step I took in this direction was the use of icons: rather than creating a limited amount of icons or downloading a bespoke set, I opted to use Material Design icons that not only have a very extensive library, but also already felt more familiar to the user due to their presence throughout their device.

The most time consuming part of the design process was the creation of the grid. I needed a grid that would work with visuals of different sizes without cluttering the screen and that would be easy to implement on Power BI. After a few iterations, I chose to use a grid consisting of 40x40px squares with 20px spaces in between, plus an extra grid with a navigation bar to the left. This decision helped determine the size of the visuals and all the elements that would be needed to add as a background for each. I categorized the type of elements according to their size (small or large) to simplify the amount of elements to choose from.

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The implementation of the new design system for Power BI dashboards resulted in:

1. Improved Consistency: The standardized design elements and interaction patterns led to a uniform user experience across all dashboards.
2. Enhanced Usability: The development team reported higher satisfaction with the new dashboards, citing improved readability, accessibility, and ease of use.
3. Increased Efficiency: The reusable components and templates reduced the time and effort required to create new dashboards, enabling quicker turnaround times for new reports.
4. Scalability: The design system provided a flexible foundation that could easily accommodate new features and adapt to the organization's growing needs.

Overall, the project successfully addressed the initial challenges and delivered a design system that enhanced the functionality, usability, and aesthetic appeal of the Power BI dashboards, empowering the client to make data-driven decisions more effectively.