Power BI Report Design Masterclass

Understand the objectives, structure and expected outcomes of the programme.

• Introduction to the Power BI Report Design Masterclass
• Meet your trainer and the course approach
• Why professional Power BI dashboard design matters
• Basic report vs decision-support dashboard
• Common Power BI report design challenges
• Programme overview and learning roadmap
• Tools and resources required
• Introduction to the final dashboard project

Learning outcome: Understand the full course journey and how each module builds toward professional, business-ready Power BI reports.

Communicate clearly by selecting the correct charts, colours, labels and structures.

• Introduction to data visualization and why it matters in BI
• What is IBCS — International Business Communication Standards
• The IBCS SUCCESS formula: Say, Unify, Condense, Check, Express, Simplify, Structure
• Core principles of effective data visualization
• Gestalt principles and pre-attentive attributes
• Chart types: comparison, trend, distribution, relationship, composition and ranking
• How to select the correct chart for your data
• When to avoid pie charts, gauges and overcrowded visuals
• Colour theory and sequential, diverging & categorical palettes
• Accessibility and colour-blind-friendly report design
• Typography, font hierarchy, titles and subtitles
• Data label and axis formatting; reducing visual clutter

Learning outcome: Choose appropriate visualizations and apply internationally recognised standards to Power BI dashboards.

Collect, document and translate business requirements before development starts.

• Why requirement gathering is essential for Power BI projects
• Determining business goals and reporting objectives
• Understanding the decisions the dashboard must support
• Identifying stakeholders and the target audience
• Executive, management, analytical and operational reports and personas
• Selecting the report structure and suitable KPI & chart types
• Defining measures, calculation rules, filters and slicers
• Drill-down and drill-through requirements
• Refresh and data-frequency requirements
• A requirement-gathering framework, KPI template and visual requirement matrix
• Functional and non-functional requirements
• Mapping the user journey, navigation and UX requirements
• Stakeholder interviews, sign-off and avoiding scope creep

Learning outcome: Create a structured Power BI requirement document and convert stakeholder needs into a clear development plan.

Improve dashboard usability, accessibility and visual consistency.

• Difference between UI and UX design
• Applying UX principles and usability to Power BI reports
• Creating a clear visual hierarchy for different user groups
• Brand identity, company guidelines and dashboard colours
• Primary, secondary and accent colours; accessibility and contrast
• Whitespace, alignment, spacing and grid-based layouts
• Designing professional KPI cards, filters and navigation panels
• Consistent headers, footers and page structures
• Responsive and scalable layouts; avoiding common mistakes
• Dashboard wireframing with Figma
• Reusable components and high-fidelity mock-ups
• Presenting wireframes and getting design approval

Learning outcome: Create professional dashboard wireframes and apply consistent UX and UI design across report pages.

Format and configure native Power BI visuals for clean, interactive, professional reports.

• Planning report pages, canvas size, backgrounds and wallpapers
• Creating and applying Power BI JSON themes and colour palettes
• Formatting charts, titles, labels, legends, axes and gridlines
• Dynamic visual titles and professional KPI cards
• Conditional formatting: colour, icon, data bars and variance indicators
• Error bars, forecasting and anomaly detection
• Drill-down, drill-through and page/visual filters
• Slicers, advanced slicers, date, hierarchy and field-parameter slicers
• Bookmarks, buttons and action controls
• Field parameters, what-if parameters and visual interactions
• Syncing slicers, page navigation and custom menus
• Report and dynamic tooltips; pop-up filter panels
• Show-and-hide with bookmarks; mobile-friendly reports

Learning outcome: Format native Power BI visuals and create interactive experiences with filters, bookmarks, buttons, parameters and navigation.

Part A — SVG visuals: creating SVG with DAX, viewBox and data URIs, dynamic values and colours, SVG bar/line/pie/lollipop charts, progress bars, sparklines, custom KPI cards, and performance considerations.

Part B — Visualized tables & matrices: in-cell bars, icons and status indicators, progress bars in matrices, sparklines, variance formatting and executive scorecards.

Part C — Deneb custom visuals: Vega and Vega-Lite, installing Deneb, coding structure, marks/encoding/transforms/layers, interactive visuals, lollipop/radial/candlestick/beeswarm and layered charts, tooltips, conditional formatting, debugging and best practices.

Part D — Advanced KPI & analytical visuals: KPI cards with native visuals, SVG and Deneb; current value, target, variance and trend; comparison indicators and bullet charts.

Learning outcome: Create advanced, customised Power BI visuals using DAX, SVG, Deneb and visualized matrices.

Turn charts and KPIs into clear business stories that guide users to decisions.

• What data storytelling is and why it matters
• Understanding audience, context and the main message
• Information hierarchy and structuring a dashboard story
• Overview, analysis and detail report structures
• Storytelling titles, subtitles, definitions and annotations
• Highlighting trends and exceptions; reference and target lines
• Explaining variance and performance drivers
• Actual vs target and current vs previous comparisons
• Dynamic commentary, Smart Narratives and DAX-based narrative text
• Guided stories with bookmarks and executive summary pages
• Actionable insights and avoiding misleading narratives

Learning outcome: Build reports that clearly communicate what happened, why it happened and what action to take.

Apply everything in a full end-to-end case study.

• Business scenario, dataset and reporting requirements
• Business goals, user personas and KPI definitions
• Report page structure and dashboard user journey
• Figma wireframe, review and improvement
• Power BI theme, layout, measures and calculated KPIs
• Interactive pages: slicers, filters, navigation, drill-down and drill-through
• Advanced visuals and data storytelling techniques
• Usability testing, visual consistency and performance optimization
• Presenting, collecting feedback, publishing and sharing

Learning outcome: Complete a portfolio-ready dashboard demonstrating professional design, interactivity, storytelling and advanced visualization.

Use built-in AI to discover insights and interact with reports.

• AI capabilities in Power BI — benefits and limitations
• Key Influencers visual: categorical and continuous analysis
• Decomposition Tree and AI-driven root-cause analysis
• Smart Narratives and automatic report summaries
• The Q&A visual, natural-language questions and synonyms
• Using AI responsibly and validating AI-generated insights
• Combining AI visuals with traditional Power BI analysis

Learning outcome: Use Power BI AI visuals for root-cause analysis, automated explanations and self-service reporting.

Identify and fix slow visuals, inefficient DAX and design issues.

• Why reports become slow and the impact of report design
• Reducing visuals, optimizing slicers and managing high-cardinality fields
• Data model design, star schema and reducing model size
• Measures vs calculated columns
• Performance Analyzer: recording and identifying slow visuals
• DAX Studio: server timings, query plan and measure analysis
• Formula Engine vs Storage Engine; expensive calculations
• Optimizing iterators and filters, using variables, avoiding context transitions
• Re-testing performance before publishing

Learning outcome: Analyse and improve report performance using Performance Analyzer, DAX Studio, modelling best practices and efficient design.

Design and develop a professional dashboard independently, then present it.

• Review a new business case study and reporting objectives
• Identify audience, define KPIs and select visualizations
• Create the page structure and a Figma wireframe
• Build an interactive report applying UI/UX and data-viz best practices
• Use storytelling titles, advanced KPI visuals, filters, navigation and tooltips
• Optimize performance and present the final dashboard

Assessment covers: business relevance, KPI and chart selection, visual hierarchy, UI/UX quality, colour and typography, interactivity, storytelling, accessibility, performance and overall professionalism.