Reporting Design

Why are maps easily understood? Water is blue, North is up, and highways are thicker than country roads. These things are always the same.  The same principles can be applied to reporting. Colors should be used sparingly and always convey the same meaning. For example, a business with four locations can designate a color to represent each location. Graphic representations can be defined like this for many other things such as inventory, revenues, and costs.

What is the Benefit?

Easy to understand, easy to read. With good information design the meaning of a chart can be understood without reading the legend.

The central "Report Definition Sheet" (RDS) contains the settings that are used in reporting. For example, colors can be assigned to product groups such as bicycles, motorcycles, and automobiles. Every user who creates a chart using OneBoard automatically uses the settings from the RDS – and OneBoards interprets these freely customizable settings to determine how information should be represented.