Dashboard Design: Visual 'Unity in Variety'

As Business Intelligence consultants at E-mergo, we do a lot of work visualizing data for our clients. As a consultant, you focus on correctly streamlining the required data, and then making that data understandable for the client through visualizations. The importance of applying the right visualization method is increasingly being researched and recognized in science. For example, several studies have shown that when a web tool is perceived as beautiful or attractive, its use – the user experience (UX) – is naturally experienced as positive. In this blog, we explain the design principle 'Unity in Variety', which contributes to good visual design.

Growth and diversity of data

Data is growing in complexity and diversity, making it even more important to keep all this information organized for users. A well-known problem with data visualization is that when many different data analyses are displayed on a single page, the overview is quickly lost. People naturally tend to visually group visual elements into one understandable whole. When this isn't possible, for example because there are too many elements on a page, the user experience will deteriorate and use of the application will decline.

Data Visualization

To avoid a page containing too many elements, it's useful for a developer to be aware that a 'good' design is half the work. By making the right preparations and applying various design and development principles, you can create a dashboard design that end users will actually want to use. So it's very important to take the 'looks' of an app into account. When designing such a dashboard, 3 design aspects need to be taken into account, which together ensure a beautiful and functional data visualization app:

1. The client's wishes, in terms of layout and analytical content
2. The design and development principles that ensure a user-friendly app
3. The design principles that ensure a high aesthetic preference.

Unity in Variety

One of the many design principles that can contribute to a high aesthetic preference is 'unity-in-variety'. This design principle assumes that there's an optimal balance between visual unity and variety. This principle is used in many different design disciplines, such as product design, website design, and dashboard design. An example of what is meant by unity and variety is shown below:

A good balance between unity and variety is always (unconsciously) preferred by the user. When visual unity dominates, a page is quickly perceived as boring. When visual variety dominates, a page is quickly perceived as chaotic and cluttered. The optimal balance between the two is therefore always perceived as the most beautiful and preferred. An important effect of 'finding a design beautiful' is that this emotion has a positive effect on the expected ease of use.

The balance between unity and variety

To achieve a perfect balance between visual unity and variety, you need to optimize both. By ordering and adjusting characteristics such as color and size of the elements on a page, you can create an optimal balance. The best way to create unity on a page is to use symmetry. When elements are arranged symmetrically (relative to each other), they create visual calm. Contrary to what many designers think, users also have a need for variety in visual designs, as long as this is accompanied by a lot of unity. The best way to create variety on a page is by using a range of colors. However, it's important to know that: the more colors you use, the more symmetry you need to apply to maintain the balance. Below you'll see examples used in a large scientific study that tested this design principle. The examples are 3 variants of 1 webpage that were adjusted to optimize the balance between unity (symmetry) and variety (in color).

figure 1: webpage variant with the greatest amount of color and the highest amount of symmetry.
figure 2: webpage variant with the least amount of color and the highest amount of symmetry.
figure 3: webpage variant with an average amount of color and an average amount of symmetry.

The examples also confirmed the theory: participants always preferred the variant where the symmetry and the amount of color used were highest (figure 1). Figure 1 contains the most colors and the most symmetry. In this example, unity and variety are therefore in balance, which is why users experience this website as the 'most beautiful'.

Written by Tran Nguyen, Qlik Consultant at E-mergo

Want to know more?

Want to know more about best practices for dashboard design? Then discover 7 data visualization tips in our free ebook. Fill in the form below and download the ebook right away!