Geckoboard’s easy-to-follow interactive widget assistance feature

Geckoboard is a cloud-based tool that helps teams create customizable data dashboards. Using Geckoboard, teams of all sizes can easily share key business metrics in real-time.

Geckoboard’s widget assistance feature provides users with easy-to-follow instructions, so no one is left scrolling through FAQs for answers.  

Take a look at how Geckoboard walks users through adding a widget to their dashboard for the first time:

Users start with a clean dashboard and a hand-drawn illustration of KPIs and business data. When users click  “+ Add widget,” they’re prompted to select a spreadsheet and data set from their computer or cloud drive and move on to the next page.

Based on the data selection, users get eight visualization options.

Here, the user picked an option that was a no-go because of the data selection, but Geckoboard came through with a handy tooltip!

What we like about this really good UX:

• It’s the simple-to-follow, detailed walkthrough that did it for us. There’s no guesswork for the user. Geckoboard provides clear step-by-step instructions on exactly what users should do after each action.
• When users hover over the Column Chart visualization option, the text box that appears offers them insight into why that choice won’t work. The copy doesn’t make users feel like they broke something on the dashboard. Instead, they see what they got right and the exact changes they need to make to use the desired feature.
• The contrast of the bright widget assistance instructions in the foreground against the faded data set in the background makes navigating the page easier. Users can focus on following the instructions to move through the process without getting distracted by the text in the back.