Applying the 5 elements of UX design to business intelligence dashboards
Ever opened a business dashboard and felt… annoyed? Confused? Like you’re staring at a puzzle instead of insights? Many dashboards are built with powerful data engines but weak user experience (UX).
And when UX is bad, it’s often hard to explain why. Fortunately, Jesse James Garrett’s 5 elements of user experience make the invisible visible. They break down UX from the core problem a product solves to the color of its buttons. Let’s use this framework to analyze why some dashboards feel effortless while others make you want to close the tab.
A dashboard without a clear purpose is like a compass without a North – its needle spins, but it never leads you anywhere. Developers often fall into the trap of “let’s build a tool that solves everything.” But a tool that tries to do everything often does nothing well.
Take a cost control dashboard as an example. Its job is to answer questions like:
If that same dashboard starts adding detailed profit trends, customer counts, and marketing KPIs, it’s no longer a focused cost control tool. It’s a “business performance dashboard,” which is broader and either less focused or less affordable. Such trade‑offs are always there, and a clear dashboard strategy is about navigating them deliberately.
Lesson: A clear strategy defines which business problem your dashboard will solve, and ignores everything else.
Scope defines how the dashboard delivers on its strategy. In BI, this usually means which visuals and interactions are truly necessary. For a cost control dashboard, useful features might include:
The key is restraint. Every additional visual competes for attention. Dashboards bloated with features may look impressive at first glance, but they become mentally exhausting to use. It’s like packing for a long journey: take only what you need.
Lesson: Every element should earn its place. Unnecessary features steal attention without adding insight.
Great dashboards lead your brain step by step by limiting the amount of information on the page and structuring the pages into a logical flow. Poor dashboards dump everything at once and hope you figure it out.
Example of a logical flow:
This kind of structure reduces cognitive load. According to Miller’s Law, the average person can only keep about seven items in working memory. Overstuff a dashboard, and your users will mentally “tap out.”
Lesson: A dashboard should feel like a well-paced 5-course meal, not all five courses shoved into your mouth at once. Even the best ingredients become overwhelming when piled on a single plate.
If you ever catch yourself asking, “Where’s that button again?” after learning a tool, the skeleton has failed.
The skeleton is the layout of interface elements (charts, filters, buttons) and the consistency of that layout. A good skeleton allows you to scan and navigate without effort. A bad skeleton makes your eyes sprint marathons.
BI dashboards are notorious for weak skeletons:
Lesson: A clean, consistent grid reduces friction. Your eyes should glide across the dashboard, not run an obstacle course.
Finally, the surface is the visual layer: colors, contrasts, fonts, and emphasis. This is what people notice first, but it only works if the layers beneath are solid.
A strong surface directs attention – the most important graph should dominate space naturally – and supports readability: colors, contrast, and fonts make trends instantly clear.
Ugly colors and low-contrast lines aren’t just an aesthetic problem, as they slow down decision-making. Surface is the stage lighting of your dashboard. If every light shines at once, nothing feels important; if the lighting is thoughtful, the star of the show is unmistakable.
Lesson: Visual polish isn’t decoration. It’s guidance for the human eye.
Every layer builds on the one below it. A beautiful surface can’t save a dashboard that has no structure. A feature-packed tool is useless if it doesn’t solve a clear problem.
The next time a dashboard frustrates you, ask yourself: Which UX layer is broken? And if you’re designing or buying a dashboard for your small business, remember: Clarity always beats complexity.
