A working dashboard and a well-designed dashboard are not the same thing. In this chapter you'll learn the four design principles that separate reports viewers trust from reports they ignore: visual hierarchy, alignment, whitespace, and the five-second rule. You'll also take a structured look at the Summit Gear dashboard to identify exactly what the polish pass in the next chapter will fix.

This chapter sets the mindset before the hands-on work. By the end you'll have a clear picture of why design decisions matter and a specific plan for what needs to change on each page of the dashboard.

A viewer opens your dashboard and within five seconds says "I'm not sure what this report is about". Which design principle did you most likely violate?

Master the skills needed to turn raw data into professional, interactive reports using Power BI. You'll connect to data sources, clean and transform data with Power Query, build data models, write DAX measures, and publish polished dashboards to Power BI Service. No prior experience required.

Design Principles for Dashboards