Zeus - DViz Dashboard Framework Design Challenge

Welcome to "Zeus - DViz Dashboard Framework Design Challenge". The purpose of this challenge is to design the best dashboard framework of all time (re-usable elements). It should be so good, so compelling, so easy to use, that any user who glances at it will feel irresistibly drawn in to look at it, to push a button, to drag data and charts, and trust what they see. Your design should be so good, that we can assume the customer can/will win an award just for the design!

The customer is a large technology business with thousands of internal users across the globe. And what you are designing is NOT a single report, but the framework that will control ALL dashboards for all time, at the customer. Plain, boring, usual-effort submissions would not work in this challenge. Be creative and Be great!

The users are executives, finance managers, business managers, assembly line managers, agents, and salespeople. The dashboards will be accessed many times each day. You should demonstrate what an executive view looks like, and what a "regular" dashboard view looks like. We provide example scenarios for you to consider below.

Please read the challenge specification carefully and watch the forums for any questions or feedback concerning this challenge. Let us know if you have any questions in the challenge forum!

TIMELINE

• Submission Start: Tuesday, 16th February 2021 23.00 PM EDT
• Rolling Checkpoint Review Start: Friday, 19th February 2021 09.00 AM EDT ($100 rolling checkpoint prizes each for 5 placements)
• Submission End: Wednesday, 24th February 2021 09.00 AM EDT

CHALLENGE OVERVIEW

• We already have a reporting dashboard created to show the company performance metrics but the current graphics are jarring and un-inspiring (check screenshot). 
• We need your creativity to bring the WOW factor. 
• The new design should be easy to read and should become a benchmark for further designs.

TARGET AUDIENCE

• Multiple users will be using this dashboard. 
• Users will be a mix of experienced employees and employees that use Power BI (tools that will be used to develop the dashboard) for the 1st time.
• Senior Executives at Zeus should be able to see the dashboard and quickly get a snapshot.

DESIGN GOALS & PRINCIPLES

• Your design needs to be compelling by making the visualization interactive and enable users to walk through or drill into the different insights.
• Elegant, clean, simple, user-centered look and feel with modern aesthetics.
• Use color, visual comparison, and drill-down charts to highlight comparison. Your use of color changes should comply as much as possible with IBCS guidance, but, if you must depart from their guidance, you can. Just include a few remarks on the reason.
• The overall design and user experience.
• Engaging and easy-to-use/interactive UI.
• How well does your design align with the objectives of the challenge?

EXPLORATION SCORE

In terms of expectations, we would like to measure the concept against the following on a one to ten scales:

• Creativity: 10
  • 1: barely new ideas
  • 10: a utopic product but with features that can be fully implemented
• Aesthetics: 8
  • 1: low-fidelity design, wireframe, or plain sketch
  • 10: top-notch finished looking visual design
• Exploration: 8
  • 1: strictly follow an existing reference or production guideline
  • 10: open to alternative workflows/features not listed here that would help the overall application
• Branding: 8
  • 1: don’t care at all about the branding just functionality
  • 10: without a properly branded product there is no success

BRANDING GUIDELINES

• Please follow the STANDARD GUIDELINES (apply as a member to get the document for free) from IBCS standard documents (means use the IBCS principles overall as inspiration - but please still be creative and make it clean, fresh, modern, engaging, and professional)
• Please see THIS REFERENCE on how we like the visualization to be created (screenshot of the dashboard sample - what we like and what we don't like) 

POWER BI REQUIREMENTS

• At some point in the near future, the winning design will be built in PowerBI.  So, your design must take that into account.  It’s OK for a few screens to require custom work, and it’s ok to design a feature that will need to be custom-built once and then reused forever, but it’s NOT ok to create a design that will require lengthy custom work for every single dashboard and report.
• All principles of good UX design e.g, minimize user clicks, make the experience more intuitive, minimal time to reach desired selection criteria, store user selections for multiple reports and performance, good color and font themes, etc. - these are all critical success factors for this challenge.
• Needs to show understanding of Power BI Design Best Practices and also take a look at the Design Tips
• Please do some research on the Power BI software and get familiar with its purpose, limitations, and what's possible.
• You can reference this VIDEO about Power BI.

REFERENCE

• Example dashboards design reference for your considerations:
  • https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/
  • https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-dashboard-create
  • https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Galleries/ct-p/PBI_Comm_Galleries 
  • https://id.pinterest.com/steffuhnee/power-bi-dashboards/?lp=true 

TARGET DEVICE

• Desktop: Minimum 1366px width and height according
• It needs to be easily adaptable in various screen size/different monitor resolutions

REQUIRED FEATURES

• Intuitive experience for end customers
• See comments under the PowerBI section above 
• Easy to translate to Microsoft PowerBI reports
• Allow a different variety of charts and data visualization. Think about filtering, sorting, and exporting the data
• User will be accessing this dashboard frequently every day

SCREEN REQUIREMENTS

For this challenge, we are looking for the below screens to be created in your submission. The functionality details listed below need to be included in your solution:

00) General Requirements

• The data won’t be translated but any text like labels, legend, etc should be translated to different languages, dimension tables will be multilingual
• Use a framework design approach. The job isn't to design a single screen. The job is to design the whole report framework theme (e.g. the dashboard design elements can be reused for other projects in the company) - Create GUI KIT for all design elements in the dashboard so we can easily re-use it in the future!
• The design should be modern, fresh, and have a positive vibe that the users will WANT to dig in.  It engaged them and has a wow factor.  It leaves a GREAT first impression.  Great ease of use.  Has to entice them and make them want to do more with the data
• PowerBI is the implementation platform so it needs a clean look. Don’t overcrowd the content
• The initial view of a data chart should be complete enough to communicate data easily, and a mouseover for more data is encouraged, but it’s not OK to hide critical info (like units or scale) behind the mouseover
• The app will be localized.  Graph, Labels, and Text will be translated although the data will not be (e.g. a product named "BIrdcage 2" will always appear as "BIrdcage 2")

01) Dashboard Screen
We need to create a dashboard screen that covers the following scenarios:
 

• Scenario 1: 
  • Home page/navigation - design the first page somebody sees when they visit the dashboard portal.  
  • Please check the screenshot from the dashboard sample for content reference
  • Metrics Panel need to be provided in the dashboard:
    • Filter (Currency, Time Period, Comparison, Data as Of)
    • Summary of Net Sales, Gross Margin, SG & A, Operating Profit
    • Products Cash Flow Forecast
    • Website Analytics feature
    • Key Metrics Panel
    • Inventory
    • Latest Daily Sales
    • Global Performance Summary by Net Sales
    • Full Lead Sheet By Region and By Division

 

• Scenario 2: 
  • The user will have interaction with the dashboard and wants to see cash flow forecasting for a selection of products.  
  • Show past (actual) data and future (projected) data over a 12 month period.  
  • On the same plot, show the same forecast(s) calculated by at least one other (pretend) model - you could compare products like for example “SARIMAX” to “LSTM” (so if you plot 5 products, you’ll show 10 plotlines, 2 each for each product - for the data in the past, let the mouseover or something near the chart show that the SARIMX and LSTM plots show what the models predicted back then).  
  • Shows a 3-year plot as well (and mind the IBCS standards).

 

• Scenario 3:
  • Website analytics - something that divides the screen into sectors and shows line plots, pies, bars, etc in the different sectors.  
  • How the user would interact with those different sectors, or force them to play together, is one of the things that would identify a standout design

IMPORTANT

• Keep things consistent. This means all graphics styles should work together
• All of the graphics should have a similar feel and general aesthetic appearance

MARVEL PROTOTYPE

• We need you to upload your screens to Marvel App
• Please request for marvel app in the challenge forum
• You MUST include your Marvel app URL (in your marvel app prototype, click on share and then copy the link & share it with your notes/comment on this link while you upload)

SUBMISSION AND SOURCE FILES

Submission File

• Submit all JPG/PNG image files based on Challenge submission requirements stated above

Source File

• All source files of all graphics created in either Sketch, Adobe XD, or Figma and saved as an editable layer

Declaration File 

• Declaration files document contains the following information:
  • Stock Photos Name and Source Links from allowed sources
  • Stock Art/Icons Name and Source Links from allowed sources
  • Fonts Name and Source Links source from allowed sources
• MarvelApp - share link for review

FINAL FIXES

• As part of the final fixes phase, you may be asked to modify content or user click paths