Design Principle 5. Consistency

by Ryan Goodman

5. Consistency: Consistency encapsulates all of the previous 4 principles into a single concept of creating uniformity and coherence across the entire dashboard implementation. Consistency is applicable in many forms not only in the dashboard aesthetics, but through information design itself.

Information design- The measure names, titles, and analysis is should be aligned with the business process and intended dashboard purpose. In many organizations, there are standard tools used for communicating and presenting quantitative information. Upon implementing a new dashboard project, you will obviously want to improve the medium for information delivery, but also use consistent charting, tabular views, and methodologies.

Navigation- In an interactive dashboard, you will need to use consistent navigation paradigms and controls for user familiarity and ease of use.

Layout- A large scale dashboard project should incorporate a standard layout, which consists of the placement and proximity of elements to enable user familiarity and adoption.

Color- The consistency of color is apparent not only for general aesthetic purposes, but more importantly for designating rules for color. For example, if you designate a tan color to represent regional (let’s say Asia) data within a bar chart, all other graphics representations of Asia should utilize the same tan color.

Text- Just like the navigation controls and graphs used to present data, text properties must also remain consistent throughout the design. You should always use the same typeface and style throughout your design.