Designing Power BI Dashboard (Power BI Lab)
Reflective Piece

What?

This lab involved designing a three page Power BI report using a sales dataset, with a focus on report layout, visual configuration, slicers, filter behaviour, and publishing to the Power BI Service. The tasks went beyond simply adding visuals and instead required deliberate decisions about layout, interactivity, and how users would navigate and interpret the report.

Although the dataset was sales focused, the tools and workflow felt familiar. In my professional role, I regularly use Power BI to build dashboards for education and assessment data, such as pass rates, exam performance, and compliance reporting. What made this lab different was the structured design narrative and the shift into a commercial context. Working with sales, targets, and profit margins was new territory, but it was approached using tools and techniques I already felt comfortable with.

So what?

The main value of this lab was not learning new Power BI features, but learning how to think more intentionally about report design. The emphasis on page structure, synced slicers, and consistent filtering highlighted how easily reports can confuse or mislead users if these elements are not carefully managed. This resonated strongly with my own experience at work, where dashboards are often reused by different stakeholders with varying levels of data literacy.

The lab reinforced the idea that Power BI is not just a visualisation tool, but a communication tool. Design choices directly shape how insights are understood. Few (2013) emphasises that effective dashboards reduce cognitive effort and guide users toward meaning, rather than presenting disconnected visuals. This principle was clearly reflected in the Overview page design, where trends, comparisons, and breakdowns were combined into a coherent story.

Working with sales data was unexpectedly engaging. While the domain was unfamiliar, the analytical questions felt transferable. Trends over time, regional performance, and results versus targets closely mirror the types of questions I answer using education data. This made the lab feel like working in a familiar environment while learning something genuinely new, which helped keep the experience both comfortable and challenging.

The exercise also made me more aware of gaps in my existing practice. While I have built effective dashboards, I have not always been deliberate about storytelling across pages or filter consistency. Seeing these issues addressed explicitly prompted me to reflect more critically on my own work.

Now what?

Going forward, this lab will influence how I design Power BI reports in my role. I intend to be more deliberate about layout, slicer behaviour, and narrative flow, particularly when building reports for non technical users. I also see clear opportunities to adapt some of the sales focused patterns, such as performance versus targets and variance analysis, into education reporting.

Power BI’s widespread use across industries makes this especially relevant. As Gartner (2024) notes, Power BI remains a leading analytics platform due to its accessibility and integration within organisational data ecosystems. This lab strengthened my confidence in using Power BI beyond my current domain and reinforced its value as a tool for clear, responsible data communication.

Overall, the lab helped me move from simply building dashboards to thinking more critically about how insights are presented, interpreted, and used.

References

• Few, S. (2013). Information Dashboard Design: Displaying Data for At a Glance Monitoring. Analytics Press.
• Gartner. (2024). Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms. Gartner Research.
• Microsoft. (2023). Why Power BI. Available at: https://powerbi.microsoft.com