Today, I was tasked with redesigning a Sales Report dashboard to make it accessible for users with dyscalculia.
Dyscalculia is a specific and persistent difficulty in understanding numbers which can lead to a diverse range of difficulties with mathematics.
Symptoms of dyscalculia:
- Trouble with mathematical concepts, especially mental math
- Slow to tell time on an analog clock
- Poor memory for anything number-related, like dates or facts
- Difficulty counting and recognising numbers
- Difficulty interpreting graphs and charts
Main changes that I made to the dashboard:
- split one dashboard into two separate ones
- removed unnecessary KPI's, added breathing room between numbers, changed font sizes and added some bold text to highlight the most important ones
- changed some KPI's into bar charts, added an annotation line to show only one value at the time
- added dynamic zone of visibility to switch between different charts
- avoided overload in the tooltips
- rounded the numbers
- reduced number of labels
What could I add more?
- indication for filters
- information about possibility of hovering over bar chart to see additional information
It was an eye opening experience to put yourself into someone else's shoes and adjust an existing dashboard to be legible for users with dyscalculia. It was a difficult task to understand all the needs that dyscalculia friendly dashboard requires and make it happen in such a short time.