Thursday, April 10, 2025

Why UI/UX Planning Is the Missing Link in Your Power BI Strategy

Nicholas Lea-Trengrouse
Knowledge
Person designing a Power BI dashboard with focus on UI/UX elements.

Most Power BI projects start in the wrong place. You open Power BI Desktop, load some data, and start dragging visuals onto the canvas. A few hours later, you have a working report - but it doesn’t work. Not for your users. Not for your business.

That’s because design isn’t just aesthetics. In Power BI, UI/UX design determines whether a report drives action or collects dust.

UI/UX Isn’t a “Nice to Have” - It’s a Strategic Lever

Before you even open Power BI Desktop, planning for user experience sets the tone. Ask:

  • Who’s using this dashboard? Executives need clarity. Analysts need depth. Operators need speed. You can't serve all three with the same layout or visual density.
  • What decisions is this dashboard meant to inform? Whether it’s a marketing pivot or a supply chain fix, your layout, KPIs, and interactions should guide users toward that decision.
  • What’s their data comfort level? A C-suite user doesn’t want to explore 15 filters. A data analyst might need exactly that.

Skipping these questions creates dashboards that look fine but fail to deliver business value.

And there’s data to back that up. According to McKinsey & Company, companies that invest in great design outperform their industry peers by nearly double in both revenue growth and total returns to shareholders. Design matters - not just to users, but to outcomes.

Step Back Before You Step Forward: Structure Before Styling

Before visuals and slicers, start with structure.

A clear layout plan helps clarify how information should flow, how users will interact with the report, and where to place key insights. It also reduces rework later by forcing early decisions about hierarchy, spacing, and navigation.

This kind of upfront thinking is exactly what the Power BI UI Kit was built to support - bringing structure, clarity, and consistency into the design process before development begins. Paired with the Power BI Templates, it makes moving from idea to polished dashboard a much faster, smoother process.

UI Kits and Templates Are Not Shortcuts - They’re Multipliers

Once the layout is planned, the build phase is where most teams burn hours. Repeating styling decisions. Rebuilding layouts. Guessing what “clean design” looks like in Power BI.

That’s where Nudge’s Power BI UI Kit and Power BI Templates come in.

These tools turn UI/UX theory into ready-to-use, business-ready designs.

Real Benefits for Reporting Teams and the Business

  • Faster Delivery Prebuilt layouts and styling assets let teams skip repetitive setup and get to value faster.
  • Consistent Look and Feel Reports adopt a unified style across departments, reinforcing branding and trust.
  • Built Around Actual Use Cases Dashboards for oversight, analysis, or operations - each comes with the right balance of clarity and depth.
  • Simplified Onboarding Clear layouts and intuitive navigation reduce the learning curve for new users.
  • Reusable and Scalable A standardized design system reduces duplication and improves long-term maintenance.

Good design isn’t just about aesthetics. In McKinsey’s research, the most design-forward companies not only improved product usability but saw significant reductions in development time and support costs - delivering clear ROI across the board.

The Cost of Starting from Scratch

Design systems can be built internally - but not quickly, and not without tradeoffs. Every custom layout, every style choice, every manual fix adds up in time and complexity. And without a solid UI/UX foundation, reports risk looking unpolished or being misunderstood.

Nudge’s UI Kit and Templates are ready-made solutions that embed best practices into every element - without adding technical debt.

The Case for Better Design, Backed by Tools That Deliver

Strong UI/UX isn’t about making reports pretty. It’s about removing friction, improving speed to insight, and reducing wasted time. Whether it’s better decision-making, less training, or cleaner handovers between teams - the impact compounds.

NudgeBI’s Power BI UI Kit and Power BI Templates help teams do just that, without reinventing the wheel.

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