Seetalabs’ senior front-end developer and UX/UI designer Fabio Zaccaria is here to answer one of the most asked questions, “how to design an effective dashboard for power sector applications?” Dive in to this conversion with Fabio to learn about his experience in designing Ronin and learn from his approach and best practices for similar applications in other industries.
Q: What are the main goals and challenges of dashboard design for power sector applications?
A: The main goal of dashboard design is to provide users with the most valuable and actionable information at a glance. Users should be able to understand the current state of their assets and fleets, identify trends and patterns, spot issues and potential criticalities, and take the next steps. The main challenge is to balance the amount and complexity of data with the clarity and simplicity of presentation. You need to prioritize what data to show, how to visualize it, how to organize it, and how to interact with it.
Q: What are the steps you followed into designing Ronin AI Dashboard?
A: I follow a user-centered design process that involves research, ideation, prototyping, testing, and iteration. The first step is to understand the user needs, goals, pain points, and context. I conduct user interviews, surveys, observations, and analytics to gather insights and feedback. Then I define the user personas, scenarios, tasks, and user journeys. Based on that, I brainstorm ideas for possible dashboard solutions. I sketch low-fidelity wireframes and mockups to explore different layouts, components, and interactions. Then I create high-fidelity prototypes using Figma. I test the prototypes with real users to validate the usability, usefulness, and desirability of the dashboard. I collect feedback and data to measure the user satisfaction and performance. Based on that, I iterate and improve the design until I reach the optimal solution. So you may understand it was an hard job but definitively worthed as our clients now really appreciate the friendly approach.
Q: What are some of the best practices and tips that you applied to Ronin AI dashboard?
A: Tailor your dashboard to needs, preferences, expectations, and behaviors of your final users and not set them according dreams of your AI/IT back end people.. Ok I am joking[…]. But it is true that on the other side of the stream you often have non-IT experts and mostly transformers users and managers. So, I became a kind of translator of languages while designing Ronin client interface. Then we wanted to not overload it with too much with irrelevant data but at same time using many charts, graphs, tables, icons, colors, labels, etc. – all optimized for clarity and simplicity and to have the best user experience
We also tried to reduce as much as possibles text by leading explanations in two main areas: the FAQ that are very explanatory and complete and the demo experience that is the “first touch” of any users into Ronin AI. There is also a legend section that helps the user interpret the health index values
Q: What’s next for Ronin AI dashboard?
A: The UX/UI world is constantly evolving. This leads to a continuous and constant update, we will soon move to a new version of our dashboard that will keep all existing highlights of current version plus some new features. But I cannot tell you more. Just stay tuned.
Thank you Fabio!
We want to remind you that the best way to understand the potential of Ronin is to try it by subscribing to our demo and requesting a free trial license.