Heuristics for Supporting Cooperative Dashboard Design.

Area of Science:

• Data Visualization
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Information Systems

Background:

• Dashboards have evolved from static metric displays to interactive tools supporting analysis and communication.
• Current design guidelines often overlook the expanded scope, focusing primarily on visual design.
• Dashboards need to facilitate analytical conversations for effective data interaction.

Purpose of the Study:

• To reframe dashboard design as facilitating cooperative analytical conversations.
• To develop a set of design heuristics for effective analytical conversations.
• To assess the utility of the cooperative dashboard concept and its heuristics.

Main Methods:

• Defined cooperative dashboards based on conversational principles.
• Derived 39 dashboard design heuristics for analytical conversations.
• Evaluated heuristics with 52 graduate students critiquing and designing dashboards.

Main Results:

• Participant feedback indicated heuristics surfaced novel dashboard failure points.
• The proposed heuristics encouraged more fluid, supportive, and responsive dashboard design.
• The cooperative dashboard framing proved useful in practice.

Conclusions:

• Dashboard design should prioritize facilitating analytical conversations.
• The 39 heuristics offer practical guidance for creating more effective dashboards.
• Future work includes developing authoring tools and extending principles to other analytical workflows.