I’m excited to announce that I will be offering a full-day pre-con about Power BI report design in the coming year called Bookmarks, brain pixels, and bar charts: creating effective Power BI reports. For a full session description and prerequisites, please visit the session page.
I built this pre-con to help people better approach report design as an interdisciplinary activity where we are communicating with humans, not just regurgitating data or putting shiny things on a page. There are many misconceptions out there about report design. Some people see it as just a “data thing” that only developers do. Many BI developers avoid it and try to focus on what they consider to be more “hardcore data” tasks. I often hear from people that they can’t make a good report because they aren’t artistic. This hands-on session will dispel those misconceptions and help you clarify your definition of a good Power BI report. You will see how you can apply some helpful user interface design and cognitive psychology concepts to improve your reports. And you’ll leave with tips, tricks, and a list of helpful resources to use in your future report design endeavours.
Your report design choices should be intentional, not haphazard or just the Power BI defaults. We’ll review guidelines to help you make good design choices and look at good and bad examples. And we’ll spend some time as a group creating a report to implement the concepts we discuss.
Basic familiarity with Power BI is helpful for attendees. If you know how to add a visual to a report page, populate it with data, and change some colors, that’s all you need. If you feel like you lack a good process for report design to ensure your reports are polished and professional, this session will share an approach you can adopt to help accomplish your design and communication goals. If you feel like your reports are luckluster or not well-received by their intended audience, join me to learn some tips to improve. If you are a more experienced report designer and you want to learn some new techniques and see the latest Power BI reporting features, you’ll find that information in this session as well.
So far, I’m scheduled to present this session at two SQLSaturdays in Q1 2020:
SQLSaturday Austin – BI – February 7, 2020. Please register on Eventbrite.
SQLSaturday Chicago – March 20, 2020. Please register on Eventbrite.
SQLSaturday pre-cons are very reasonably priced. This is a great way to get a full day of training on a low budget! I hope to see you in Austin or Chicago.