Client: One of the largest banks in Middle East
Project brief: Data visualisation
Team: Customer SPOC, development team, studio manager (myself), UX and UI designers
Recently, we have been engaged by one of the largest banks in the Middle East to modernize its dashboard portal. The portal provides the bank’s management and staff with a single point of information. The dashboard includes key performance information related to the portfolio handled by different users and senior management. There are specific user roles and role-based access/information. The key considerations in the modernization project include usability, intuitiveness, ease of navigation, higher adoption and performance. Our team created dashboards for multiple groups in the bank using the process explained above and has received appreciation from the bank’s senior management.
We took a data storytelling approach to help the bank visualize data in the most effective manner. The first step in this direction is a Design Thinking approach to co-create and visualize along with the customer teams. In these sessions we not only create the dashboards, but also identify the narrative and create the underlying story. This helps in making a bigger impact with the same set of visualizations.
Aesthetics, persuasiveness and memorability play a big role in a dashboard’s effectiveness. Also, understanding the context is important to design charts that will tell the story and not present data sets. Emphasis also plays an important role. Consider a busy dashboard with eight charts stacked one on top of another. How do you ensure the user gets the right message and action points? How do you ensure the user is following the right path or sequence? There are many emphases forms you can use such as boldface, color, highlights, pointers, labels, and so on.
In data visualization projects, we often see the trend to check for a chart library, select a chart type and click a few buttons and create a chart. Such temptation should be resisted. The approach is that you first understand the concept, review the data, have a design thinking workshop with the stakeholders and create the base story. All these will help you figure out what is really needed. It will help produce a more memorable experience.
One key takeaway is that dashboards and charts will only say what is happening. They will not tell the 'why' aspect. This leaves some users struggling to understand the whole meaning. Your narrative will fill in the gaps in the user's understanding. Overall, all stories have a setting and some conflict that needs a resolution and how the end goal was achieved. If you apply the same narrative principle in data storytelling, the core ideas will be conveyed better and will be understood quicker and remembered.
Published article on Data Storytelling:
