It seems we cannot go a day without seeing a post from someone along the lines of “Rate my first dashboard”. Microsoft have also have a “World Visualisation Championship”. While it is important for developers to be able to produce aesthetic content and that does often ease the interpretation of complex data, it is rare for an organisation to say “No, we simply cannot proceed with ugly visuals”. A truer statement would likely be that almost every customer we’ve worked with has had at least one element in their visuals that we would question, but that are “required”. So what is going on, who is right – or more appropriately, is someone wrong?
The crux of this issue is that visualisations are required by an organisation to help support their objectives first and foremost. As such many ways of monitoring are “locked”, there is an expectation that visuals will be in particular format for continuity. In addition, it is rare that the developer is also going to be the primary consumer of their content. So the landscape of reporting and so Business Intelligence is that content must be built in a way that makes it familiar to the audience. There is a momentum in that requirement either with specific content being a hard requirement in a specification or a even just a reluctance to present “radically different” ideas to senior leaders the result is the same. New ideas are rejected or ignored and that can be a source of frustration between business and developers.
Looking back through the documentation provided to clients over the years for their solutions there is a clear sign that an organisations momentum has influenced the majority of our project. There is a clear trend that as engagements our influence begins to increase but those initial reports and dashboards often show the hallmarks of being “required”. There are also many, many experiments where requirements need to be mapped into the imperfections of power BI, Gantt charts spring to mind here, although there are many things that go beyond the basics of surface analytics that Power BI needs to be coaxed into providing. We have heard many times the same complaint “Power BI is marketed as a charting tool yet it cannot do…”.
The reality is that Power BI is not the tool many consider it to be and that the documentation and training materials often fail to convey just how Power BI works. Complex visuals are often used in a tool because a complex idea must be expressed in a single image due to a limitation of the tooling or a desire to produce a static image. Power BI was not designed to be consumed in this way, the use of cross-highlighting or filtering combined with the layering capabilities and the low cost of access makes it rare that a better solution is to simply put a single chart in place.
Consider the example above on the right is a climate chart with multiple axes, the chat is difficult to understand and requires significant effort. On the left is a multi-chart version of the same visual. The multiple visuals provide a clearer picture than the combined. This is just one example of where the ability of Power BI to produce multiple visuals based on a Semantic Model rapidly makes a better experience that a single chart built in isolation.
Here we have reached the heart of the challenge. The solutions that are being replaced with Power BI are often traditional in nature meaning that each element must be build separately and specifically structured around a particular table of data. Power BI on the other hand uses a Tabular Modelling structure meaning that each visual element is constructed not only based on the whole model, but also on the selected or highlighted elements elsewhere on the page. This means that rather than trying to cram more detail into a single element it is recommended and even preferred to use a multiple visuals or pages or even reports to express the full detail rather than just having a single chart pushed to provide everything.
In our Newcastle parkruns report we have explored layering where you explore the data through the use of tooltips and drillthroughs to express information, this is very much the preferred mechanism for assessing and reviewing content from Power BI. This makes for an extreme challenge of how to provide board level reporting where PowerPoint is still the tool of choice and it is not uncommon for people to still print slides to review and make notes on. This means that when you have a single slide you end up with the visual on the right rather than a multi-chart version. The change point here is one that depends on the client, some start to move to using Power BI reports or a dedicated Power BI App to run meetings, with all report content being made available either within PowerPoint (interactively) or a browser. This marks a significant change indirection for many boards and is something that will take time for a business to adapt to. Therefore it is not a day one things, but rather something that in practice is slowly introduced and will also depend very much on the specific structures of your organisation and the flow of your critical board meetings.
In truth, reports and dashboards in an organisation are a matter for that organisation, it is imperative that a Centre of Excellence continues to champion simple multi-chart layouts and the ability to drill and use tooltips to place insights in the palm of peoples hands rather then in overcomplicated charts that few understand. The accessibility of your insights is how they will transform your organisation. After all when a team can see how they are performing and if it is getting better or worse they are more likely to act and make changes rather than waiting several weeks until it is presented at a board meeting, potentially when the fix has already been implemented.
Power BI Developers must be aware of the drivers the must go into the design of a report or dashboard, it cannot just be what you would like to show and the way you would like to show it. Our recommendation would be to have a single KPI or focus per page with the other visuals on the page supporting that KPI or focus, with tooltips, drill through, drill down and cross-highlighting or cross-filtering configured. Additionally content should be built with the long term in mind, often examples shows are built around the data today, when the data changes shape as data does over time it will affect the aesthetics of the report. Labels should be clear and specific to the report or axis. Colours should be carefully considered and wherever possible a dedicated corporate theme should be used (that theme may well go beyond just the basics of Power BI but also include colours for specific content i.e. regions or departments.
The ability of Power BI to build report content around a data model is what gives it the capability, the ability for a citizen developer to shape that model is what gives it agility. Geordie Consulting has worked to support companies like yours to maximise the value proposition that Power BI can bring to them, not just on day one, but throughout its lifecycle within your organisation. There is also no reason why a Centre of Excellence model could not work for your next Data Platform as well meaning we will help work with you to transform the usage of data within your organisation not just today, but we will help you embed lasting business change. Why wait, book your call today and start to move your organisation forward with Geordie Consulting.
