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Intermediate 5 hours of video 33 lessons Exercise files included Certificate of completion

Dashboard Design

Layout, colour, chart choice and hierarchy — how to build a dashboard people read instead of ignore.

Buy this course — €30 All 9 courses for €65

About this course

A dashboard fails for design reasons far more often than technical ones. Too many charts, colours that carry no meaning, no visual hierarchy, and a viewer who cannot tell in three seconds whether things are going well. This course covers the craft: what to show, what to cut, and how to arrange what remains.

What you will be able to do

  • ✓Define the audience and the decision before opening any tool
  • ✓Choose the right chart for comparison, composition, distribution and trend
  • ✓Build a visual hierarchy so the most important number is unmistakable
  • ✓Use colour with meaning, and keep dashboards readable for colour-blind viewers
  • ✓Design layout on a grid with deliberate alignment and whitespace
  • ✓Add context to numbers: targets, prior periods and variance
  • ✓Cut the visuals that add noise instead of information
  • ✓Test a dashboard with a real user and act on what you learn

Course content

7 modules · 33 lessons · approximately 5 hours of video

Module 1 — Start with the decision

Audience, question, action. The one-page brief to write before building anything.

Module 2 — Chart choice

Bar, line, scatter, small multiples. Why pie charts usually lose and stacked areas mislead.

Module 3 — Hierarchy and layout

Grids, reading order, sizing by importance, whitespace, and the top-left rule.

Module 4 — Colour

Categorical, sequential and diverging palettes. Semantic colour, accessibility and contrast.

Module 5 — Context and comparison

Targets, benchmarks, prior periods, variance and sparklines. A number alone means nothing.

Module 6 — Reducing noise

Chart junk, gridlines, 3D effects, redundant legends, and the discipline of deleting.

Module 7 — Testing and iteration

Five-second tests, watching a user, and improving from real confusion rather than opinion.

Requirements

  • A computer with Microsoft Excel installed. Microsoft 365 is recommended; where a feature is version-dependent, the lesson states this and shows the alternative approach.
  • No software is provided with this course. Learners must hold their own licence for any Microsoft product used.
  • Roughly 5 hours of study time, which you can spread over as long as you like — access does not expire.

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