10 Best Practices for Tableau: Designing Data Visualisations That Drive Action

 A great Tableau dashboard isn’t just about presenting data beautifully – it’s about using Tableau to create effective dashboards that deliver clarity, insight, and impact. When you follow Tableau best practices, you move beyond decoration to dashboard design that enables confident decisions. Too often, visualisations get cluttered with redundant data points, excessive colour, and charts that don’t serve a purpose, creating confusion instead of clarity.

The most effective data visualisation starts with a clear design principle: clarity over complexity. Strip away the noise, highlight key takeaways, and guide the user to meaningful conclusions. Think of walking into an Apple store versus a Chemist Warehouse. One offers an intuitive layout with purposeful visual design; the other is an explosion of colour and distraction. A well-designed dashboard should feel like the former: clean, focused, and easy to interact with.

At the heart of data visualisation best practices is understanding your user. A dashboard for executives differs from one built for frontline staff. Tableau dashboards need to reflect the dashboard needs of their audience. Trying to serve everyone often means serving no one. Great dashboard design considers who the data is for, what action it should drive, and how best to present data for fast, informed decisions.

From selecting the right chart to using colour intentionally, mastering Tableau is part art, part data science, and all about the user experience. Below, we break down the 10 best practices for creating effective dashboards in Tableau Desktop or Tableau Public.

👀 Prefer to watch instead?
We’ve dedicated an entire episode of our unDUBBED podcast to What Makes a Great Data Viz. Skip the scroll and view here.

1. Less is More: Simplify Your Dashboard Layout

The first best practice is ruthless simplification. Think back to the Apple vs Chemist Warehouse analogy. Too many dashboards in Tableau suffer from "metric overload."

Every worksheet or dashboard element should have a reason to exist. Remove redundant data points, excessive labels, and thick axis lines. Reduce the number of colours used to no more than four. This isn’t just about aesthetics – it’s a foundational visual best practice that improves comprehension.

2. Highlight Key Metrics with BANs (Big As Numbers)

BANs are one of the most powerful visualisation techniques in Tableau. They instantly surface critical sales data, KPIs, or performance metrics without requiring users to dig. But a BAN should never just be a number floating in space. Provide context with a comparison, trend line, or sparkline. Add an arrow to indicate direction. These small design touches make the data come alive.

3. Know Your Audience and Use Data Intentionally

Trying to create a universal dashboard rarely works. Is your audience a beginner or an expert? Are they exploring data analytics or scanning for updates?

Design dashboards with clear visual hierarchy, using Tableau’s capabilities to layer content effectively. Start with a summary, and let users interact with the dashboard to drill into detailed data. This layered UX helps accommodate multiple roles without compromising clarity.

4. Consistency Builds Trust Across Workbooks

Visualisation consistency is more than branding – it’s about trust. Align fonts, sizes, padding, and dashboard layout across workbooks. Ensure filters appear in the same place. Repeated use of templates and style guides not only speeds up development but helps the user navigate with confidence. When Tableau dashboards are set up consistently, the user-friendly experience promotes better decisions.

5. Use Colour Strategically

Too much colour turns your dashboard into a unicorn rave. Too little and your data fades into the background. The solution? Start with a neutral base and add colour sparingly to emphasise.

While branding in the company colours can increase trust, at times they don’t suit data visualisation - always keep accessibility in mind. Many users are colour-blind, so ditch red-green scales and use icons or saturation shifts. Tableau allows for custom colour palettes that enhance readability and improve visual analysis.

6. Choose the Right Chart for the Job

Not all charts are created equal. Pie charts are often requested but rarely useful for visualising data accurately. Bar charts and line charts remain the gold standard for most data views, while scatter plots, heat maps, and highlight tables offer value for specific use cases.

Always ask: What action should this visualisation prompt? Let that guide your chart choice. This is especially important when working with complex data in large workbooks.

7. Storytelling vs Exploration: Design With Purpose

Does your dashboard need to tell a story or enable exploration? Not all data stories are linear. Storytelling dashboards guide the user with annotations and a narrative flow. Exploratory dashboards let users dive into related data and draw conclusions themselves.

Use annotations, guided flows, and visual cues to support either path. And remember: frequent updates mean hardcoded narratives may age poorly. Using Tableau, design with data storytelling in mind, while leaving room for flexibility.

8. Quick Tips to Make Your Dashboard Better

Want fast improvements? Try these data visualisation best practices:

• Use fewer than 5 colours
• Increase white space
• Align elements and standardise fonts
• Simplify tooltips by removing unnecessary titles and try to use sentence-style
• Ensure bar charts start at zero
• Keep filters consistent across tabs
• Add a peer review step

These small design moves can instantly make your dashboard more intuitive, elegant, and effective.

9. Build with Effective Viz Best Practices in Mind

When you design a dashboard, keep in mind the overall dimensions of a visualisation and your audience’s screen size. Tableau will resize your visualisation based on screen space, so test for responsiveness. If you’re publishing to Tableau Public or deploying via Tableau Server or Tableau Desktop, make sure your visualisation at the size works.

Use Tableau automatically generated legends and headers wisely. And always limit the number of filters, charts, and fields to avoid overwhelming the user.

10. Create Visual Impact That Drives Action

The ultimate goal of a dashboard is not just to visualise, but to influence. To make your dashboard work harder, focus on data visualisation best practices that drive clarity, credibility, and action.

Be strategic. Use Tableau features to build dashboards that don’t just look good – they work for the business. From understanding your data source to applying the right layout, filters, and design cues, these are the best practices for effective dashboards.

The Final Takeaway: Make the Data Work

Great dashboard design is about turning complex data into something accessible and actionable. When you follow visualisation best practices and keep the user front-of-mind, you don’t just present data – you drive better decisions.

If you’re stuck with a dashboard that isn’t delivering, Dub Dub Data’s Glow Up Viz Reviews are here to help. Send us your workbook at [email protected] and we’ll turn your good into great!

 Watch the What Makes a Great Data Viz Podcast 

In this episode of unDUBBED, Fi and Sarah explore the essential elements that contribute to great data visualizations. They discuss the importance of clarity, understanding audience needs, and the role of design consistency. The conversation delves into the significance of accessibility, typography, and the effective use of Big As Numbers (BANs). They also touch on the importance of choosing the right chart types and avoiding common pitfalls, such as clutter and ineffective visualizations. The episode concludes with quick wins for improving visualizations and the narrative aspect of data storytelling.

TAKEAWAYS

• Clarity is crucial in data visualizations.
• Understanding the audience helps tailor the dashboard.
• Big As Numbers (BANs) can enhance communication.
• Accessibility in design is essential for all users.
• Typography should be legible and consistent.
• White space reduces clutter and improves readability.
• Design guidelines help maintain consistency across visualizations.
• Choosing the right chart type is vital for effective communication.
• Avoid common pitfalls like pie charts and cluttered designs.
• Great visualizations enable users to see patterns and insights.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction to Data Visualization

01:12 The Importance of Clarity in Dashboards

03:57 Understanding Audience Needs

07:13 Layering Insights for Different Users

07:51 The Role of Bands in Dashboards

11:40 Accessibility in Data Visualization

15:31 Design Consistency and Guidelines

20:10 Chart Types and Their Effectiveness

23:53 The Debate on Pie Charts and Maps

29:34 The Power of Maps in Data Visualization

34:58 The Importance of Effective Visualizations

40:55 Long Form vs. Slide Form Visualizations

41:47 Quick Fire Round: Data Visualization Preferences

45:46 Wrapping Up: Key Takeaways on Data Visualization

KEYWORDS

data visualization, clarity, audience needs, design consistency, accessibility, typography, chart types, insights, storytelling, quick wins