Do’s and Don’ts of effective report design
An effective report is one from which an audience can quickly grasp the key messages, and use these messages to make better informed decisions.
An ineffective report is one where an audience gets lost in clutter and unclear metrics, and has to do their own calculations to get at the numbers they really want.
Below are some ways to enhance the clarity, appeal and completeness of your reports, making them more effective in enabling data-driven decision making.
Visualisation Choice
| Do | ⇨ | Use a variety of visualisation types where practical |
| Don't | ⇨ | Overuse a single visualisation type |
By using a variety of visualisation types in a report, you will reduce the sense of monotony when your audience takes in your report.
While adding variety is good, make sure that you are using the right visualisations to convey the message you intend to - see How to choose the right visualisation to simplify these choices.
Unit of Measurement
| Do | ⇨ | Use as few units as practical to make your point |
| Don't | ⇨ | Always leave the units of measurement as the default |
Showing a large number in the thousands or millions is a great way to reduce the clutter of a report, and pinpoint the key message that counts for an audience.
As an example, 1.2M is a simpler number to take in that 1,229,517, and in many reports this would provide sufficient detail to fulfil its purpose.
Benchmarks
| Do | ⇨ | Use multiple benchmarks for key metrics |
| Don't | ⇨ | Confine yourself to the simplest benchmarks |
When adding benchmarks, make sure that these are the most useful benchmarks to assess performance of the main time period.
An example is to use a same day prior week benchmark for daily reports, as these are often a more relevant comparison than the prior day. A same day prior week benchmark, for instance, would compare a Monday to a Monday.
Rather than just comparing to single time periods, you can also compare to the average of a collection of previous time periods. This places your current metric in a broader context.
This will avoid your audience thinking something like “revenue was better than last week, but we know last week was bad”.
Use Ratios
| Do | ⇨ | Use sensible ratios that provide insight on performance |
| Don't | ⇨ | Present absolute performance values in isolation |
Along with the right benchmarks, ratios are a useful way to place an absolute metric in context, and enhance their relevance to making decisions.
A ratio that is often presented at a national level is GDP per capita. The value of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is a useful metric for assessing a country’s national output, but tells us nothing about productivity. By using the ratio of GDP per capita, we get a better sense of a country’s productivity as well.
Continuous Improvement
| Do | ⇨ | Consistently challenge the current report design |
| Don't | ⇨ | Let a report's design become stale |
A report should provide a familiar point of reference to inform decisions, however, maintaining familiarity doesn’t mean that a report shouldn’t change with the times.
By keeping a report fresh you’ll also reduce the chance that it will be entirely replaced in future, which is not only a time-consuming exercise, but also reduces that sense of familiarity.
Following best practices when creating reports will make it simpler to adjust and add to reports in future.
Collaboration
| Do | ⇨ | Ask the report audience how they are using the report |
| Don't | ⇨ | Assume a report is effective because no one says different |
It is important that you, as the report designer, seek broad feedback on how the report is put together, so that it benefits from as many perspectives as possible, and doesn't suffer from your own blind spots.
It may be that you compile the report and are also a key audience member. This may make it easier for you to spot problems in using a report, however it may also increase the chance that your own biases impact on your design decisions.
Questions to get actionable feedback on report design
What is the key message you take away from this report?
Is anything unclear in this report?
What additional calculations are you performing using the numbers found in this report?
Is there anything in this report that feels out of place?
Conclusion
Designing a report doesn’t need to be a complicated, arduous task. By thinking broadly about how an audience will take in the information you will provide more actionable, valuable insight.