Designing a dashboard

Before we get started and work on a new dashboard, it’s best to have a plan of action. Ask yourself a few questions:

• What information do I want to convey?
• What is the visual context for the dashboard?
• What is most important and what is least important?

Let’s take a look at these questions in more detail.

Conveying information

In the case of our dashboard, we will be building a dashboard that can be used to produce a display of the current weather. For this purpose, we will need to describe the following conditions:

• Current temperature and dew point
• Barometer reading and trend – rising, falling, or steady
• Wind direction and speed
• Visibility

We also want to know the current temperature as that will help us decide what to wear, for example. The dew point is an indication of humidity (and relative comfort, depending on the temperature) as well as providing an indication of how low the temperature...