Stanford GSB: Interactive Simulation

Dashboard UI Design | Iconography

As the Visual Design Lead on the Learning Design and Technology team at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, I had the privilege of working with a team that pushes the boundaries of conventional online learning models to create immersive online learning experiences. This included developing  interactive simulations; they were some of the most complex and powerful projects I had the pleasure of collaborating on.

For this particular interactive, we build an application that simulates the experience of being a “sales representative”

One of the challenges for this project was the amount of information that needed to be communicated on a dashboard. We needed to design a dashboard that informs users of their individual numbers while displaying the various data points of each sales activity.

My Approach

In order to design a user interface that would give users the full breadth of information at a glance, we separated the content into chunks. The information that was deemed critical to users making a decision got more real estate and was designed to be more visually energetic.

We used an array of icons to help communicate the different sales activities. However, we knew we could not rely on colors alone to help us communicate the various states in which a sales activity lives in. So, I utilized basic shapes to create icons for each activity and added texture to the shapes to communicate the various states of an activity. This allowed us to build a visual language that systematizes the display of information and helps users decode information with a glance.

All course material is the property of Stanford Graduate School of Business. If you would like to know more, please feel free to contact me. In the meantime, here are some snapshots of my work.