Wireframing for BI Dashboards: A Guide to Dashboard Wireframes

I’ve wanted to write a blog on this topic for a while now. Over the years, I’ve seen some people love wireframes and others really dislike them. Previous colleagues were concerned whether clients would be willing to pay for the additional time and effort. So, where do I stand? I’m firmly on the side of using wireframes. The benefits they bring to my clients (and to me as the person doing the work) are just too big to ignore. With that said, let’s explore this together.

What are Dashboard Wireframes in BI?

In the world of business intelligence and data analytics, a dashboard wireframe is a visual blueprint or representation of a dashboard or report that shows how the end solution will look and function.

I also need to say that dashboard wireframes are a core concept in UX/UI and not just relevant to dashboards. They play a role in app and website development. In this blog though, we will be focusing exclusively on dashboard wireframes.

Are all Wireframes the Same in Design and Key Features?

Wireframes and dashboard designs aren’t a one size fits all. A key difference lies in how much detail each wireframe includes. To explain this, we introduce the concept of fidelity in wireframing. Simply put, a wireframe’s fidelity describes how detailed, accurate and complete it is compared to the final product, which in our case is the dashboard.

Levels of Fidelity: Low, Medium and High

These are the definitions I myself associate to each, many sources describe these levels differently and "medium" in particular can be interpreted in multiple ways.

Low-Fidelity Wireframes: Very rough layouts created with minimal effort. It can be a hand drawn sketch on paper or a quick digital draft using Paint, Excel, PowerPoint or any tool that lets you place basic shapes.

Medium-Fidelity Wireframes: A step up from low-fi, medium-fidelity wireframes look cleaner and more structured than rough sketches. They use grayscale layouts (or minimal colour accents) to clearly show where each element such as visuals, filters, headers and navigation will be placed on the canvas. You might create these with a ruler on paper to ensure straight lines or build them digitally. While there’s no full colour palette or detailed iconography yet, the structure and spacing closely mirrors the final dashboard’s layout.

High-Fidelity Wireframes: The closest you can get to the real solution without building the live dashboard. I see that many may refer to this as a mockup or a prototype (though I completely disagree with calling it a prototype), a high-fidelity wireframe shows exact icons, typography, colour palettes, graphs and realistic visualisation. It can also illustrate interactive elements (tooltips, expandable filter panels) so end users can experience how the final product will behave. In short, it gives stakeholders a true look at the finished dashboard before any development work begins.

Below are three examples of each, that way you can get a better understanding of how a wireframe will look at the different stages.

What Are The Benefits of Using Wireframes for Dashboards?

You now know there are different fidelity levels in wireframes which we will further below. But you might be wondering, why create wireframes in the first place? Isn’t it just extra work? Why not simply gather requirements and start building?

So, the benefits below are general to just wireframes for reporting solutions and dashboards. They are not targeted to a specific fidelity level. But as I said, we will explore each in more detail further in the blog.

Benefit 1: Pushes You To Think

The thought of gathering requirements (and by gathering requirements, I mean doing it correctly) and then immediately moving to the build phase scares me. I understand that each solution is different, and for a small-scale project or a one-on-one engagement, an informal approach can work. However, if we jump straight into build mode, data visualisation, Power BI, Tableau, etc. we don’t give ourselves enough time to think through the requirements we’ve just collected. Our focus shifts from crafting a meaningful story, answering business questions, creating an effective dashboard that helps make informed decisions, to simply assembling elements onto a canvas and formatting them. Creating a wireframe allows us to step back, brainstorm and ensure the right elements are included to bring the story to life, now that we have all the details from our end users.

Benefit 2: Provides a Clear Blueprint and Removes Guesswork

When done correctly, a well-built wireframe acts as a blueprint for success. By the time you’ve created a detailed wireframe, you would have also already gone through the entire requirements gathering process. With that foundation in place, building the actual dashboard becomes significantly easier. The wireframe eliminates ambiguity, developers know exactly where each chart, KPI and filter belongs, so they can execute the build without constantly asking follow-up questions. In other words, a solid wireframe removes guesswork and allows you to hand off the design to a developer who can recreate the dashboard precisely as intended. I have done this endless times and clients are happy, as all the heavy work is in the requirement gathering and wireframing, and after even their internal developers can conduct the build with minimal support.

Benefit 3: Saves Time and Money by Avoiding Rework

Yes that is right, it SAVES times and money. I have made discussions with people who say the opposite. From my experience this is simply not true and stand by it. A detailed wireframe that mirrors the final dashboard, therefore a high fidelity wireframe, cuts down the endless back and forth between development and requirements. It's much more timely and costly to build in Power BI, then have to revert back your development work. When end users can sign off on an accurate wireframe, everyone knows exactly what will be built. Zero surprises! That clarity means fewer last-minute changes, faster development cycles and ultimately time and cost savings.

Benefit 4: The Final Validation Check to Catch Misunderstandings

I like to think of the wireframe stage as our last opportunity to validate requirements and uncover any misalignments between me (the person doing the work) and the end users. The reality is, you will always miss something during requirements gathering, no one explains every detail perfectly and even when you spend hours with stakeholders, bits of context can get lost in translation. The wireframe is the last chance to spot anything critical that’s been misunderstood or overlooked.

My clients consistently tell me how valuable this step is. They often say "We get the value of a deep, bespoke requirements phase, but until you see it laid out visually, it’s hard to know if it’s actually right". That’s where low-fidelity wireframes come in, we can go back and forth quickly, tweaking layout and logic until the structure makes sense. Then, once everyone is substantially happy, we move to a high-fidelity version. By the time we’re done with wireframing, there are no more surprises, everyone knows exactly what the final dashboard will look like and how it will behave.

Benefit 5: Puts Some Accountability on End Users

In my experience, one of the hardest lessons is that you can weeks gathering requirements, build out a dashboard and still get to the finish line only to hear "This isn’t what we wanted". Not good! High fidelity wireframes help avoid that. When stakeholders see a near-final mockup, they know exactly what they’re signing off on, no more hiding behind vagueness or "I thought it would look different". It naturally pushes people to get serious about feedback. They can’t just throw ideas at the wall for the sake of it. They see their name on that wireframe and when the dashboard ends up looking exactly like that, well, it’s on them too.  So, it’s the final sign off before moving into development.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not just to look after the person conducting the work as it genuinely helps the business and end users too. It encourages everyone to stay focused on what we’re building, to give the time needed. I’ve been in too many projects where a lack of accountability cost time and money. A clear, high fidelity wireframe keeps everyone honest.

Benefit 6: Builds Trust and Wins Over Stakeholders

Having a high-fidelity wireframe can be the difference between a sceptical executive and an enthusiastic champion. Senior stakeholders often need that clear, trusted view before they’ll commit. When you lay out a wireframe that tells the exact story we gathered during requirements… “Here’s the challenge/objective and here’s how each visual aligns with that goal”, they immediately see you understand their objectives, their business. They can look at the wireframe and say "Yes, I see where we’re headed and I can tell if we are moving in the right direction". From there, they can drill down, "What’s causing this metric to lag?" or "Why is this KPI trending the way it is?". You’re not just handing them charts, you’re providing a narrative that makes sense. That clarity and focus wins people over, they trust the process because they can see the solution laid out before any data is connected. In short, a polished wireframe turns doubt into confidence.

Using Low and High-Fidelity Wireframes

From the above, you should now all see the benefits of using wireframing and all this comes from my personal experience working with many clients of different sizes and different industries. Now, I am going to dive into low and high-fidelity wireframes. You're probably thinking, what about medium?

Okay, I am not telling you not to use them, but in recent years I have heavily used low fidelity and high fidelity. Sure, there may be the exception where I used a medium one, so the more grayscale, but I feel the transition from low to high works for me and all my clients.

When to use Low Fidelity

Low fidelity enables further collaboration and envisioning when gathering requirements and running data storytelling workshops. When asking a set of questions to end users, recording their answers and trying to derive a story and understand their purpose, as I said above, it’s sometimes difficult for end users to envision how it will all look. Hence, low fidelity is perfect for this. When you start drawing shapes with high-level notes of what each represents and with arrows pointing to how one thing relates to the other, it makes all the difference.

Also, outside of more formal workshops, if I ever am to sit down with someone to discuss reporting requirements and we are in early stages, I always love finding a printer, taking out an A4 sheet of paper and start sketching out a skeleton of what they need. Even though it's not how the end product will look, it helps validate those high level requirements early on and assist the end users in understanding your thoughts too.

Below are some examples of low-fidelity wireframes. The hand-drawn version is my favourite approach, but of course it needs to be in-person. I also use PowerPoint and sometimes Excel to create low-fidelity wireframes. I do want to make it super clear though, there is a lot of back and forth at this stage and we will be crossing out and overwrite much of our initial scribbles.

When to use High Fidelity

As I said, there is a lot of back and forth and the way I gather reporting requirements tends to be more detailed than what I see others doing. This gives us far more opportunity to really understand what is needed. But we also need to be mindful of the end users’ time and workshop fatigue… a very real thing, which you too will see when running multiple sessions across different stakeholder groups.

Once the requirements are gathered and the low-fidelity wireframes have been used to facilitate discussions and validate requirements, I move into a high fidelity wireframe. These are detailed enough to look almost like the final product, which is exactly what makes them so powerful.

At this stage, it will allow us to get approval from the end users before any development begins. They can clearly see how the solution will look and behave and this gives them confidence that we’re heading in the right direction. High-fidelity wireframes act as a final shared artefact, before we start any dev work. Also, as I said in the benefits section, they are a great way to catch any misunderstandings or misalignments that slipped through earlier stages. Finally, high fidelity wireframes help secure buy-in from senior stakeholders.

So, I now have all the information I need to move into a high-fidelity wireframe, as the image below shows:

Requirement Gathering + Low-Fidelity Wireframe = High-Fidelity Wireframe.

To summarise the key differences between the two:

Low Fidelity

• Quicker to do
• Lower cost
• Doesn’t require full design skills
• No need for tools
• Open to interpretation
• Not fully aligned to the final product
• Helps show interaction ideas at a conceptual level

High Fidelity

• Takes more time
• Higher cost due to time and effort
• Requires more advanced design skills
• Closely aligned to the final product
• Gives users a realistic preview of the solution
• Illustrates actual interactions (tooltips, filters, etc.)
• Requires use of tools

What Should We Do Before Building the Wireframe?

Before jumping into wireframing, especially high-fidelity, it’s crucial to highlight one thing: requirements gathering comes first.

I’ve already touched on this above, but it’s worth reinforcing because it’s one of the most important steps in the entire process. At Metis BI, we follow a structured, repeatable approach to requirements gathering. Why? Because we’ve seen time and time again that skipping this step leads to wasted effort, misaligned expectations and dashboards that don’t hit the mark.

Just like I don’t recommend going straight into development without a wireframe, I equally don’t recommend jumping into wireframing without first understanding what the users actually need.

Requirements are the input to the wireframe. Without them, you're designing blindly. You need to know your end users’ goals, challenges, ambitions, pain points, key questions and the KPIs that matter most. Even more importantly, you should understand what drives those KPIs, how users interpret them and what actions they typically take as a result.

If you don’t have that context, even the most beautiful or detailed wireframe won’t deliver value. So, slow down here. Have the right conversations. Ask better questions. We have plenty of content on how to gather good requirements, so if you want to improve this step, feel free to check out our other blogs and videos on the topic.

Wireframes are powerful, but only when built on the right foundation. That foundation starts with understanding your users.

What Tools Should We Use?

There are lots of great tools out there for wireframing and I’ve tried many of them over the years: Figma, Balsamiq, Canva, Moqups, Miro and more. Each one has its strengths and some are better suited to low, medium or high-fidelity wireframes.

I’m not knocking any of them, they all have their place and I may well transition to using one of them more extensively in future if it better serves my clients.

That said, I currently stick to a very specific process for creating high-fidelity wireframes. You might look at some of the examples below and assume they were built in Power BI or a dedicated design tool, but in most cases, they’re actually built in PowerPoint.

Why? Because PowerPoint is flexible, widely understood by clients and quick for me to iterate on. It works for the process I’ve refined over the years. Also, very important that isn't shown below, through PowerPoint, I created different slides to being interactive elements to life and always add annotation boxes that bring the STORY to life. So, going back to importance of step one, gathering requirements.

If you're curious about how I create them or want help picking the right tool for your own workflow, feel free to reach out. Always happy to have a chat.

Final Thoughts

Wireframes are more than just a design step. They’re a powerful communication tool that bridges the gap between ideas and development. Whether it’s low, medium or high fidelity, when done right, they help you uncover what matters most, align end users and build reporting solutions that actually deliver value. So don’t skip them. Use them with intent and your end users will thank you for it.