The 10 most annoying mistakes that newbie dashboard builders make (No 1)
The first one is so basic it will surprise you!
I’ve been on my fair share of hiring panels for business intelligence, data visualization, and dashboard developer jobs. Lots of candidates look amazing on paper - great credentials, skills using mainstream tools like Power BI and Tableau, and some impressive looking work experience too - but then comes the written assignment to create a dashboard on some interesting open data.
We get those assignments back and… my heart breaks.
There are some mistakes that just suck the air out of a dashboard, leaving a hiring panel feeling just as deflated. Maybe candidates should have been taught better. Maybe all the bootcamps and vendor-specific certifications are missing some key content. I don’t know the root cause, but I do hope this series will help.
Over the next while, I’m going to share the 10 most annoying mistakes that newbie dashboard developers make.
Today let’s start with:
Number 1 - Neglecting to use thousand delimiters
You see, traditionally, English speakers use commas for the “digit grouping,” which enable your dashboard users to more easily read numbers greater than 999. If your dashboard has numbers in the thousands, millions, or more, you MUST use these commas!
Neglecting to use these digit-grouping commas is like serving dinner to your guests, but rather than setting the table, you leave all the cutlery somewhere else. Sure, maybe the food is presented well, but then you’re asking the guests to get up and find their own forks. Honestly, it’s rude.
Wikipedia describes digit grouping and its purpose well:
For ease of reading, numbers with many digits may be divided into groups using a delimiter, such as comma "," or dot ".", half-space (or thin space) " ", space " ", underscore "_" (as in maritime "21_450") or apostrophe «'». […] An important reason for grouping is that it allows rapid judgement of the number of digits, via telling at a glance ("subitizing") rather than counting (contrast, for example, 100 000 000 with 100000000 for one hundred million).
Inclusion of the simple comma is a basic courtesy to your data consumer. Which of the numbers below do you find easier to read?
We use commas in our large numbers for the same reason we put dashes in our phone numbers. You wouldn’t give your number out as 11234567899, unless you are a psychopath. So don’t give out numbers higher than 999 without adding those commas!! It’s a basic courtesy, and it only takes a few clicks to select out of the default number format.
Your audience’s eyeballs will thank you.
Sidenote:
Some folks may respond to this article by commenting on the cruelty of time consuming written assignments, such as one where candidates are asked to create a dashboard. I can’t argue that such written assignments may be inherently painful, but as of yet I don’t know of a better way to evaluate whether candidates really have the skills for the job. Resumes and interviews don’t show it!