Power BI Data Visualization with Purpose: Communicating through Color, Shape, and Layout

This video explains how to create Power BI visuals that provide a good user experience. The video begins by explaining how the common mindset around data visualization is often wrong, and then it suggests a better approach. Report developers are often tempted to make visualizations all about them to show off the data gathered or their report design skills, but reports should be focused on communicating and interacting with the intended audience. This video provides you with practices and guidance toward communicating the right message to your audience without clutter and distraction.

 

Once mindset and goals have been properly aligned, the video discusses the visual tools you have at your disposal when formatting a Power BI visual. These tools include color, shape, and layout. Misapplying these tools can make a visual distracting, ugly, or even misleading. Applying them correctly can make a visual pop and help to communicate the right message, which is the message you are working so hard to get across. Accessibility in report design is also discussed. Demos show how changing seemingly simple attributes on visuals can greatly improve accessibility. Common visualization mistakes are shown, along with examples of how to fix them. In addition to formatting individual visuals, the video discusses how to put them together on a report page to form a coherent analysis. 

After making an initial draft, it’s time to do a quality check on the report. This video covers what attributes to check and discusses tools to help with your quality checks. Tips are provided on helpful features in Power BI that make good design easier, such as use of report themes and templates, and setting the default visual interaction style. The video will show how to iterate on a report design to improve it based upon findings in the quality checks. The video ends by reviewing the starting point of a report that needed optimization and comparing that to the result after some improvements to see the effect on the user experience. 

For developers and analysts who need to build Power BI reports, who need guidance on how to make effective reports that provide a good user experience. Viewers should have basic familiarity with Power BI Desktop, including being able to add a visual to the page and populate it with data fields.