Considering UX Services for your software? Sign up for our series ✉️

Data Dashboard Design Service

Making data useful, actionable and explorable

Designing realistic and user-centric data viewing, exploration and transformation experiences for lay people and data professionals

Dashboard design challenges

Signs you need our help

Whether you’re looking to eliminate bad UX or enhance your UX culture, we’ve got you sorted.

Users are overwhelmed

Improvements have been difficult and time-consuming

Actionable insights aren't being surfaced

Data exploration isn’t easy or intuitive

Mini Case Studies

Recent projects with enterprise software companies

Data exploration unlocked with AI

Scenario
Data analysts historically have performed manual effort in unnecessary places, for example chart creation, data cleanup, transformation and many other places. Our mission was to determine where we could create behaviour and defaults to ease this pain through AI technology.
Outcome
Product architecture which reduces painpoints along the user journey.
Data dashboard
AI
Interaction
Analysis

Rethinking dashboards for HR suite

Scenario
An established HR platform has historically valued quantity over quality, as a result the 6+ dashboard views were underused and not seen as valuable by users.
Outcome
The amount of dashboards and views were cut down significantly. Data visualization standards were established and useful metrics were derived for different user persons.
Human resources & Ops
AI
Data tables
Data dashboards
Design System

User-specific dashboards

Scenario
A real estate company with a large dataset didn’t know the ROI on their marketing spend across platforms. The sales team was not empowered to use data to make decisions due to fragmentation of reporting across marketing and advertising systems.
Outcome
Custom dashboard experiences lead to members of the team to measure effectiveness of their part of the sales pipeline.
Real Estate
Data Dashboard
Large Datasets
Enterprise ux data dashboard examples
product arrow left
product arrow right

Our approach to dashboard design

How we craft excellent dashboard experiences

Data Visualization

We understand the data visualization techniques out there, and what they can show us

Understanding Pain Points

We appreciate the data analyst pain-points and understand the quirks or working with data

Close Collaboration

We work closely with data experts to create optimal experiences—their feedback and workflows enrich and inform our design process

User Testing

We have specific ways we conduct user testing, so that the dashboards are realistic enough to derive relevant user feedback

“P&P has a deep understanding of data and user empathy in complex experiences. They can walk the fine line between innovation and familiarity that is rare in the industry. Plus, they are equally comfortable diving deep into the weeds and zooming way out in a way that is essential for building high quality software.”
Chris Parmer, VP of Product at Plot.ly
"Collaborating with Pencil & Paper was instrumental as we shifted our product culture towards greater user-centricity. Their expertise in B2B software kickstarted this journey for us, and we can visibly see how their guidance shaped our current UX practices."
pot
Nakisa product team, (Nakisa HR Suite)

How this fits into our mission at P&P

Why we love working with data

We believe data is beautiful and that it’s wildly underused in organizations because it hasn’t been properly designed for the people using it. Dashboard design has historically been done by those few who know the data really well, meaning that most dashboards aren’t fit for the persona(s) using them. They often lack an intuitive order and composition that would be accessible to someone who isn’t an expert. Our mission as enterprise software UXers is to empower people at work through great software UX.

If more people can use data effectively as part of their workflow, we can reduce churning on basic problems, making decisions blindly and elevate the level of problem solving we can do.

Get our whitepaper

Is your software demo turning heads, or causing headaches?

Applying the right design principles to your demo can create excitement and engage your audiences more effectively. We put together this whitepaper to help you inject some UX love into your product—we cover common mistakes, what a makes a demo successful, and more!

Check it out

FAQ

Rule out risks and reservations

Dashboard design is no joke, you need to know you’re working with the crew that can get it done.

How quickly can you onboard to a complicated data situation?

We have processes in place which modify the typical UX design process and allow us to gather relevant information and start diving deep. One such process is our “data context mapping” workshop, where we derive the data details from your data SME, learning the structure, quirks, size, and nature of the underlying data. This is part of an onboarding process which lasts typically 2-4 weeks.

How can I set myself up for a successful data dashboard design project?

If you want to get your ducks in a row ahead of time, you can create a basic data dictionary and task flow for your product or dashboard. This acts as a jumping off point. In addition to that, we need a data expert who has enough bandwidth to answer questions and participate in a few design sessions with us.

What kind of products typically need dashboard design?

There are a rich variety of use cases across enterprise software products. From alert-oriented experiences, to reporting and data exploration. If your product isn’t putting its best foot forward for your users regarding data oriented experiences, you probably need some design help from the P&P crew.

How do you work with teams on dashboard designs?

P&P has a collaborative culture which is based in creativity, pragmatism and efficiency. We work on data projects with the usual crew: product managers and devs but also a data expert like a data analyst, scientist or architect.

How do you prototype dashboards?

We use high-fidelity tools like Figma to mock up ideas, interactions and behaviour. We also work with devs on client teams to prototype using real data. If you’re setup to prototype in code that’s great! If not we can still do great work.

In what capacity does your team work?

We act as a plug and play design team for a range of situations. From teams who have never integrated any kind of UX design resource, to supplementing and collaborating with existing design teams. Depending on your needs, we can take the lead on new ideas, or support the team you have in place. We shine when it comes to collaboration and integrating quickly in teams. See our article about Product Management and Design Collaboration for example.

Is there anything in the scope of design you don’t do?

We do the full scope of UX/UI design for software in the enterprise arena. This includes “zooming out” and formulating logic around the whole flow, to wireframing (mapping out screens) and producing realistic prototypes. UX/UI design however does not extend to branding or marketing, so we will happily refer you to wonderful teams we know.

phone

Ready to have a conversation?

Get in touch with our crew to find out how our expertise in UX can elevate your product.

Get in touch
Contact Us
arrow up