At the start of every year, many organizations and individuals release some variation of a “Top 10” list, often summarizing the prior year or making predictions for the coming year. For example, good friends of mine, Ken and Kevin (aka the Flerlage Twins), annually share their favorite visualizations from the prior year. Tableau Public also compiles a gallery of visualizations from the year, including the top favorited ones (one of mine even made the list!).

Since I spend a significant portion of my time developing visualizations and dashboards in Tableau, I often keep tabs on what the Tableau Community is posting on Tableau Public. I regularly check out the selected Viz of the Day (VOTD) and what vizzes are trending. This year, I decided to highlight some of the trends I observed from Tableau Public – specifically ones that I think will continue to be prominent in 2025.

KPI Scorecards

I’ve been using Tableau Public for over eight years and have noticed a marked shift from the unusual, bespoke, and complicated visualizations to highly organized, concise, focused business dashboards that stick to more basic chart types. Specifically, KPI (key performance indicator) scorecards have become a standout trend in Tableau Public visualizations over the past year due to their ability to distill complex datasets into easily digestible insights using only a few common and repeatable visualization types.

KPI scorecards balance simplicity with depth, making them especially effective at communicating key data. They typically use bold, intuitive design elements such as large numbers, color-coded indicators, and visual symbols to emphasize trends, goals, and progress. For instance, green and red arrows immediately communicate positive or negative changes, while gauges or progress bars provide context for how close performance is to predefined targets.

The minimalistic yet meaningful approach aligns perfectly with the priorities of executive stakeholders, who often prioritize high-level insights over granular details, and enables users to quickly assess organizational performance and identify trends or problem areas at a glance without the need to sift through overwhelming data tables or elaborate charts. Their adaptability across industries and departments has made them a go-to tool for presenting impactful data stories.

KPI Scorecard Examples from Tableau Public

Call Center Scorecard example by Andreea Scintei

Objectives and Key Results Overview scorecard example by Nir Smilga

Human Resource Engagement Scorecard example by Ervin Vinzon

Viz Extensions

Tableau’s viz extensions have unlocked a new world of customization and interactivity for developers, allowing users to go beyond Tableau’s native capabilities by integrating custom-built functionalities directly into dashboards. The Tableau Exchange has further democratized access to these powerful tools, and community members can now share these extensions with others for free or for a fee.

Several free viz extensions available on the Tableau Exchange are particularly useful in helping developers create visualizations that otherwise would be nearly impossible or excessively time-consuming. While many of these examples are highly bespoke chart types and not recommended for business dashboards, using these extensions has been a big trend in 2024.

Sankey

For example, the “Sankey” viz extension, created by Tableau, quickly enables developers to create a chart showing the flow, or relationship, between two or more categories.

Beeswarm

LaDataViz’s “Beeswarm” viz extension has been highly used on Tableau Public to visualize the “distribution of data points without overlap, thus revealing underlying patterns in a visually compact form.” I particularly like beeswarm charts because I can see both the distribution and density of the packed circles, and I still have access to the underlying data points, allowing me to identify more insights.

I utilized the beeswarm viz extension to show the distribution of eating disorder prevalence rate by county for an infographic created for Eating Disorder Awareness Week.

Network

One final viz extension I saw widely used last year is the “Network” extension developed by LaDataViz. While perhaps unconventional, a network diagram displays complex relationships and connections between entities, helping “users to understand how data points interact and influence each other.”

In this past year, I saw quite a few visualizations using a network diagram to show relationships between characters across various movies and social networks between people. What used to be a highly complicated and customized visualization is now quite achievable using the network viz extension.

The following image shows a network diagram of actors and their connection to each of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies.

Beautiful Business Dashboards

I think it’s fair to assume that most people who are producing visualizations on Tableau Public also use Tableau for work where they likely are developing standard “business dashboards.” Business dashboards are often characterized by a collection of charts aimed to monitor metrics utilizing aggregate data, perhaps as a big number, along with trends and benchmarking indicators giving users quick insights into what actions may need to be taken. While general definitions of a business dashboard haven’t changed, the visual aesthetic has improved over the years.

What do I mean by a “beautiful business dashboard?” I do not mean dashboards with complicated chart types, or ones with external imagery used to enhance the appearance.  Beautiful dashboards follow some simple, yet often overlooked, design best practices including:

• Minimal ink (or a high data-to-ink ratio)
• Simple and consistent fonts and weight of text
• Appropriate use of white space and padding
• An optimal flow between graphical elements
• Simple, yet clear, chart types
• Color and shapes used with intention and purpose

Last year, I noticed a significant upswing in the number of business dashboards shared on Tableau Public “just for fun.” It appeared that more and more individuals were finding value in practicing foundational design skills to develop business dashboards rather than only focusing on the fun, personal, and often more artistic, visualizations that dominated in years prior.

Below are some examples of business dashboards that are genuinely beautiful and enjoyable to interact with.

Beautiful Business Dashboard Examples

I love this dashboard by Fuad Ahmed for its clean design, effective use of whitespace, simple palette of five colors, and charts that quickly tell me how well or poorly a metric is performing based on simple numbers and colored indicators. In fact, I don’t even need to know exact values, such as in the bar charts, only if the value is under/over the budget.

Pradeep Kumar G consistently creates beautiful and technically advanced dashboard visualizations. However, I enjoyed this one on food and restaurants for its layout and user interface. The side panel with summary statistics, familiar tabs to navigate between views, simple colors, and a grid layout caught my eye. The visualization is pleasing to the eye while still maintaining a clear analysis of the data in simple yet effective charts.

Finally, this pastel-inspired dashboard by Frankie Benson caught my eye for its use of enclosure (a Gestalt principle) to organize charts that are meant to be viewed and analyzed together. She utilizes containers formatted with a light border and white background, contrasting with the pale-shaded dashboard. The colors are consistent and soft, which isn’t often seen in business dashboards but makes this beautiful. She uses white space (padding) between the sections and created custom legends with circles instead of the Tableau default square, which frees up space and puts the legend near the associated chart.

Summary

The data visualization field continues to advance rapidly each year. Innovations and technologies are developed to make our jobs more manageable, and experienced data viz professionals continue to perfect their craft while sharing skills with broader audiences. It’s clear that gone are the days of slapping charts and graphs onto a page and calling it a dashboard. There appears to be a strong desire for both developers and end users of dashboards to have clear, insightful, easy-to-interpret, organized, beautiful, and engaging visualizations. I can’t wait to see what this year holds for the data visualization field and how the community will continue to push us all to be better dashboard designers and developers.