Practical Tableau

Chapter 60. Designing Device-Specific Dashboards

One of the most common questions I receive while conducting Tableau training is “What dashboard dimensions should I use?”

As is the case with many aspects of analytics, the answer is largely dependent on the audience. Or more specifically, the answer in this case comes down to how the audience will be consuming the dashboard.

For example, will the dashboard be consumed by people at work on large desktop monitors? Or even larger conference room monitors?

Do you expect the end users to consume the dashboard on their laptops outside of working hours? What about their mobile devices outside of working hours?

As you know, there are many different devices that your dashboard can be consumed on, all with their own unique dimensions. So which one should you design for? Sure, you can use automatic sizing, but the results are unpredictable and not always ideal.

If I wasn’t positive on this answer in the past, my default dashboard size of choice was 850 pixels wide by 1100 pixels tall. These dimensions are the same as an 8½- by 11-inch piece of paper, so at the very least, I knew the dashboard would look great if it was printed out or saved as a PDF and attached to an email.

Fortunately, I no longer have to pick just one dashboard size, thanks to a new feature in Tableau 10: Device-Specific Dashboards, or DSD. The DSD feature allows the Tableau dashboard author to lay the same dashboard out with different dimensions, then Tableau will automatically ...