How do you design QlikView charts for different screen sizes and devices?

1 Understand your audience and context

Before you start designing your charts, you need to understand who will use them, how they will access them, and what they want to achieve. For example, are your users mostly on desktops or mobile devices? Do they need to drill down into details or get a quick overview? Do they have a stable internet connection or not? These factors will influence your choice of chart types, dimensions, expressions, colors, fonts, and layout.

2 Use responsive design principles

Responsive design is a technique that allows your charts to adjust to different screen sizes and resolutions by using relative units, flexible grids, and media queries. You can use QlikView's responsive design mode to preview how your charts will look on various devices and orientations, and make changes accordingly. You can also use QlikView's device detection feature to apply different settings and actions based on the device type.

3 Optimize your charts for performance and interactivity

QlikView offers the ability to handle large amounts of data and provide fast and intuitive analysis. To ensure optimal performance and interactivity, especially on mobile devices, you should use fewer and simpler expressions and calculations, avoid unnecessary or redundant dimensions and measures, leverage aggregations and filters to reduce data load, take advantage of QlikView's caching and preloading features, use conditional show/hide and layering to control chart visibility, as well as employ QlikView's interactivity and actions features to enable user selections, drill-downs, pop-ups, and navigation.

4 Follow design guidelines and best practices

When designing QlikView charts, it's important to consider not only the technical aspects, but also the visual and aesthetic aspects. Aim for clarity, consistency, and appeal in order to convey the right message and insights. To do this, use appropriate chart types for your data and purpose, colors, fonts, and icons that match your brand and theme, labels, legends, and tooltips to provide context and information, titles, subtitles, and captions to highlight key points and questions. Additionally, use white space, alignment, and balance to create a harmonious layout as well as contrast, emphasis, and hierarchy to draw attention and guide the eye.

5 Test and refine your charts

The final step in designing QlikView charts is to test and refine them. To ensure your charts work correctly, display correctly, and meet user expectations, QlikView offers several testing tools and features such as debug mode for expression and calculation checks, document analyzer for data model and performance checks, server log files for server status and errors, and user feedback for user satisfaction and suggestions. You can also use third-party tools such as browser compatibility tools to check cross-browser compatibility, accessibility tools to check compliance with accessibility standards, and analytics tools to check user behavior and engagement. By following these steps, you can create QlikView charts that are responsive, interactive, and effective on different screens and devices.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?