Get to know the end user! Direct communication ensures you understand their needs and challenges.
Understand the processes. Knowing how the report fits into users’ workflows helps identify areas for improvement.
You can’t fix wrong assumptions with design. A good understanding of the needs of the end user is crucial.
Evaluate continuously! Regular feedback and adjustments are key to maintaining a valuable and relevant report.
Power BI action-driven design
A 3 Step approach
Imagine starting your day with a report that instantly helps you take action, share insights with your team, and see what needs attention. That sounds ideal, right?
Unfortunately, many reports are still created to contain as much data as possible. This leads to cluttered pages filled with too much information and countless filter and drill-through options. Instead of providing clear insights, these reports often end up causing frustration, leading users to ignore them altogether.
But how can you create an action-driven design in Power BI?
Action-driven design
Action-driven design is a user-centric approach providing valuable and actionable insights through clear, easy-to-use visuals. By prioritizing essential information and avoiding unnecessary data overload, it helps users focus on what’s most important. This approach does not involve flooding users with every piece of information available from the data.
It’s safe to say that when everything is important, nothing is important anymore. This should be kept in mind when creating a report.
If you now wonder, “But how do I do this?” I recommend following the three-step approach in this article, which I personally always use when creating Power BI reports for others.
Topics Covered
Step 1: Research
The audience
Understanding your audience is the cornerstone of action-driven design. It’s tempting to skip this step to save time, but it’s a critical investment. Every audience has unique needs, and tailoring your Power BI report to them is important for making it actionable.
- Who are you designing for? Is it a group or one individual? Creating a Power BI report for a larger audience can be much trickier.
- What’s their experience with Power BI? Ensure your visuals and the experience level align. You can have the most advanced design; if your user does not know where the information can be found, it is useless.
- What actions do they want to take? Identify the specific decisions and tasks your audience wants to accomplish.
- What processes are in place? Understand their workflow to provide relevant context and support.
Asking Questions
Asking questions about tasks, processes, and daily actions can be very beneficial. Understanding the processes in place makes it easier to design in an action-oriented manner!
- What daily decisions do you make, and how can data help?
- What’s the most critical information you rely on?
- What do you look for first when you open a report?
- Which visualizations are easiest for you to interpret?
Step 2: Action-Driven Design
No one size fits all
At this stage, you should have a solid grasp of the end-user for whom you are creating a report and the specific actions they wish to take. But now, it’s time to visualize this information. How should you approach this step?
The perfect visual isn’t a one-size-fits-all concept. It’s important to understand that the perfect visual is the one that effectively communicates information to the end user, addresses their questions, and facilitates their decision-making process.
For example, a map visualization may work well for a broad audience-friendly infographic. In contrast, a table with bar charts and conditional formatting may be better for users who prefer detailed data analysis.
Small changes have a big Impact
Even though these tables all display the same information, using conditional formatting and adding icons and bar charts makes them much easier to read.
However, to do this effectively, it’s crucial to understand what is important to the end user so that you can highlight that information.
Provide context
When you combine different visuals, KPIs, text, and filters in a Power BI report, it can be tricky for people to find the information they’re looking for, even if each visual is simple on its own.
A good way to help with this is by adding context—like giving your visuals titles that explain what the user is looking at. You can also enhance clarity by using color coding, data labels, and legends.
Simplify or add more detail
When creating visuals, it’s crucial to think about what your audience really needs and the specific questions they’re trying to answer. Often, simpler is better. If the goal is just to see whether a target was hit and in which month, there’s no need to include extra details. This approach works well when you’re using an infographic to provide high-level information.
However, sometimes an overview isn’t enough. Your audience might need more in-depth details to make informed decisions. For example, if they want to understand which day had the biggest impact on hitting or missing a target, you’ll need to provide more detailed data. Understanding the level of detail your audience requires is key to delivering visuals that help them make the best decisions possible.
Step 3: Evaluation
After creating and sharing a report, it’s common for the end user to be initially satisfied. They receive the information they requested and are eager to use it. However, they often only realize their true challenges and areas of confusion after they have used the report for some time.
After the implementation
Keep the conversation going, and make sure that your audience knows how to reach you and that you are open to feedback.
- Regular Check-Ins: Set up meetings to discuss how the report is working and whether the desired actions can be taken.
- Open Door Policy: Let users know they can always reach out with feedback or questions.
Continuous process
Designing reports is an iterative process. You’ll unlikely create the perfect report on your first try. It’s normal to work closely with the end user, keep up communication, and make adjustments to the report.
Avoid assumptions: Don’t assume that what worked before will still work. Check to see if the report still meets the requirements.
Dealing with Challenges
So you delivered a report, but it did not lead to the customer taking more actions or improving processes and is not used.
Don’t panic!
Avoid adding extra data points or filters just for the sake of providing more information. Instead, focus on identifying what’s missing to drive actions and improve processes. Provide clear examples to help users understand how to get the most out of the report.
Key takeaways - Power BI action-driven design
Video Power BI Action-Driven design
Rather prefer a video over an article, you can find a video about the topic here: YouTube.