Responsive and Adaptive Dashboards: Designing for Multiple Devices

Discover the key differences between responsive and adaptive dashboard designs. Find out which dashboard style is best for your organizational needs and e-commerce demands.

When more than 58% of internet traffic and 60% of e-commerce sales come from mobile and 40% from desktop accounts, the demanding e-commerce business can no longer be contained to a single device.

The mobile traffic keeps growing, hence emphasizing designers to use different browsing styles that are easy to process. However, the question is how to create a dashboard design that fulfills all screen needs and covers various user requirements. Should an adaptive dashboard design or a responsive one be the better choice? 

Today’s data-driven environment requires swift interpretation and action on information to maintain a competitive edge. Especially in utility management, the efficiency of resource use and operations influences sustainability and ROI. The dashboard designs are therefore customized not only to be informative but also to meet the specific needs of organizations. 

Customized Dashboards According to Organizational Roles

Since no two roles within the organization are the same, they need customized dashboards to enhance individual and organizational performance. These dashboards include:

• The E-commerce dashboard aids store managers, owners, and marketers in buying and selling goods and services, and transmitting funds and data.
• Executive dashboards are designed to show KPIs like energy cost savings, ROIs, and long-term trend analysis.
• Operational dashboards showcase real-time data on daily activities, alerts for unusual patterns, and address operational inefficiencies. 
• Finance-oriented dashboards help with financial role management, budget planning, comparisons, and forecasting models. 
• IT-focused dashboards monitor the security of utility management systems and provide insights into data breaches, system health, and integration efficiencies. 

Responsive Dashboard Design vs. Adaptive Dashboard Design

In responsive design, the content reacts according to your dictation, while in adaptive design, you determine the result too. Let’s understand this concept and dig deeper into how they work.

Responsive Dashboard Design

With a responsive dashboard design, you can make your content respond to screen size. In responsive design, there’s a single layout and a set of rules that tell your content how to behave. This is a design that comprises individual elements flexible enough to be displayed properly on different screens, like mobile or desktop. You can minimize and maximize the width of the screen and specify target device types using CSS media queries.

Responsive dashboard design adapts to the size of the screen regardless of the target device. With the help of CSS media queries, you can change the styles based on the target device. This includes height, width, and display type to make it adaptable to different screen sizes. 

Adaptive Dashboard Design

In these dashboards, you do not have only one layout. Instead, there are multiple ready-to-go layouts for accounts that are adaptable to different screen sizes and orientations. In other words, in adaptive dashboard design, you are the one deciding how your content adapts to the user device parameters. The content will be displayed on the user’s device but in a predetermined way. 

In adaptive dashboard design, there are static layouts comprising breakpoints that don’t respond once they are initially loaded. These designs work to detect the screen size and load the appropriate layout that is generally adaptive for 6 common screen widths, including 320, 480, 760, 960, 1200, and 1600.

Why Use Adaptive Dashboard Design?

Customizing dashboards according to organizational needs has several advantages. Here are the benefits of using an adaptive dashboard design:

1. You can dynamically see your chart updates and monitor, and drive business performance.
2. Visualize numbers and charts side by side and enter data with sheets on dashboards
3. Create notes on the dashboard and collaborate with your team.
4. Analyze real-time financial and operational data over time.
5. The data tailored to specific needs and objectives enables executives to strategize with confidence, making decision-making faster and more effective.
6. These dashboards eliminate irrelevant data, making it easier to focus on what’s crucial.
7. Adaptive dashboards ensure that the data reaches the right people in the right format, hence they maximize the utility and impact of information.

Why Use a Responsive Dashboard Design?

1. The responsive dashboard design adapts to your screen, no matter if you are using a very large wide screen or a small phone screen.
2. There’s no need for advanced coding skills, especially if you are using a drag-and-drop website builder; you will have this dashboard by default.
3. It doesnt require you to download separate apps for constant maintenance. Also, it is lightweight and fully customizable.
4. Creating responsive dashboards is significantly easier and is meant to provide instant feedback.
5. These dashboards have become increasingly common, with almost every UX designer familiar with their use. A responsive dashboard gives you more control and allows you to manage white space more effectively.
6. It is more affordable, and you can hire a freelancer or an agency if you have a limited budget.

Which is Better?

Responsive dashboard design provides a consistent experience across multiple devices, making it easier to design flexible layouts that adapt to almost any screen size. The only disadvantage is that it has certain trade-offs.

 By offering a seamless experience across devices, you lose some degree of personalization. Planning and testing take time to ensure that problems don’t occur between viewports, which is challenging because the design is flexible.

However, an adaptive dashboard design offers numerous benefits. Generally, faster loading times are super important for things like SEO, user experience, and conversion rates. Adaptive layouts allow for more tailored user experiences, as they give an optimum static design. 

They are less effortful to set up and are a great way to retrofit current sites by making distinct versions for mobile and tablet viewers. Changes are less disruptive with adaptive layouts since you only need to update individual templates instead of recoding the entire site.

However, adaptive design has its limitations. You never know how your design will look on unplanned devices. Besides, adaptive websites are overall more expensive to create and maintain as they need a professional development team. Adaptive design, while harder to come by and more challenging, offers a greater ability to provide tailored user experiences.

Conclusion

In the end, the decision to use adaptive or responsive web design depends on your target audience, goals, and budget. Many designers now choose a hybrid approach. It involves combining responsive elements with adaptive layouts for a more balanced and effective website.