Data Quality, Mismatched Expectations, and Moving Requirements: The Challenges of User-Centred Dashboard Design

TL;DR

This paper explores the challenges in user-centered dashboard design, highlighting mismatched expectations and the importance of tailoring dashboards to individual user needs to improve understanding and usability.

Contribution

It provides insights into developer perceptions of user problems and demonstrates the feasibility of customizing dashboards to better meet diverse user requirements.

Findings

Users' literacy often mismatches dashboard complexity.

Developers struggle to keep up with changing requirements.

Tailoring dashboards to individual needs is feasible and beneficial.

Abstract

Interactive information dashboards can help both specialists and the general public understand complex datasets; but interacting with these dashboards often presents users with challenges such as understanding and verifying the presented information. To overcome these challenges, developers first need to acquire a thorough understanding of user perspectives, including strategies that users take when presented with problematic dashboards. We interviewed seventeen dashboard developers to establish (i) their understanding of user problems, (ii) the adaptations introduced as a result, and (iii) whether user-tailored dashboards can cater for users' individual differences. We find that users' literacy does not typically align with that required to use dashboards, while dashboard developers struggle with keeping up with changing requirements. We also find that developers are able to propose solutions to most users' problems but not all. Encouragingly, our findings also highlight that tailoring dashboards to individual user needs is not only desirable, but also feasible. These findings inform future dashboard design recommendations that can mitigate the identified challenges including recommendations for data presentation and visual literacy.