Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
Summary
How to bring data visualization best practices into your products, from dashboards to reports to BI tools. Learn about which charts to use when, creating accessible color palettes, and preview some new visualizations Theresa Neil has been testing in enterprise organizations.
Key Insights
-
•
Clients often request 'sexy' dashboards without clear user questions or goals, leading to ineffective visualizations.
-
•
Understanding whether a dashboard is exploratory or explanatory shapes design and chart selection.
-
•
Starting data visualization projects by focusing on users and their questions is crucial, not just the data.
-
•
Simple data presentations (like a single number with explanation) can outperform complex charts when users struggle to interpret visuals.
-
•
Using inappropriate or inherited marketing color palettes in dashboards can cause false data associations and accessibility issues.
-
•
Creating dedicated data visualization color palettes (qualitative, sequential, binary, diverging) that are accessible and brand-aligned improves interpretability.
-
•
Tools like Viz Palette enable designers to check color accessibility across chart types and color blindness variants interactively.
-
•
Advanced visualizations like multigrain charts and correlated charts help users analyze complex, temporal, or cause-effect data relationships.
-
•
Mobile and dark mode designs must be approached with different user contexts in mind, especially for operations center environments.
-
•
Effective dashboards limit the number of key metrics to tell a clear story rather than overwhelm users with all available data.
Notable Quotes
"Make me a dashboard, no matter what, is the one thing I've heard more than anything else for 20 years."
"Sexy dashboards is something I've heard from companies ranging from patent law to genomics."
"The real question is who's gonna be using this dashboard and what questions are they trying to answer."
"Our general public, even advanced enterprise users, often struggle to interpret even the most basic charts."
"Color tells you where to look. That’s why color in data visualization must be intentional."
"Inheriting marketing style guides is the biggest mistake in data visualization color use because they’re usually not appropriate."
"We don’t want ugly charts for accessibility, we want good chart colors that complement the brand and remain accessible."
"Sometimes the best answer isn’t a chart but a single number augmented with explanatory text."
"Dark mode is particularly useful in network and security operations centers where visibility in dark rooms is critical."
"You have to start with users, not the data, and force prioritization to avoid dashboard overload."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"We made this move in January 2020 — our research and insights team moved out of UX but stayed within product organizations."
Nalini KotamrajuResearch After UX
March 25, 2024
"The end of history illusion is that we think we're done evolving, but we vastly underestimate future change."
Dean BroadleyNot Black Enough to be White
January 8, 2024
"Silence is complicity. Inaction is support."
Denise Jacobs Nancy Douyon Renee Reid Lisa WelchmanInteractive Keynote: Social Change by Design
January 8, 2024
"Our team’s improvement wasn’t the final state—we set ambitious goals to be in the 80th to 90th percentile next year."
Kim Fellman CohenMeasuring the Designer Experience
October 23, 2019
"Saying no shouldn’t be about being difficult but about accountability beyond any one person."
George AyeThat Quiet Little Voice: When Design and Ethics Collide
November 16, 2022
"Visual style isn’t just enough to make something feel cohesive."
Nathan CurtisBeyond the Toolkit: Spreading a System Across People & Products
June 9, 2016
"We are building cross-product research capabilities to curate a holistic understanding of agents across all workflows and touchpoints."
Greg PetroffThe Compass Mission
March 10, 2021
"Culture is the sticky glue holding us together but flexible enough to allow us to move in new directions."
Chloe Amos-EdkinsA Cultural Approach: Research in the Context of Glocalisation
March 27, 2023
"Heat maps showed users clicking on areas they thought were clickable but weren’t, resulting in click rage."
Mackenzie Cockram Sara Branco Cunha Ian FranklinIntegrating Qualitative and Quantitative Research from Discovery to Live
December 16, 2022