DashChat: Interactive Authoring of Performance Dashboard Design Prototypes through Conversation with LLM-Powered Agent

Abstract

Performance dashboards are dashboards designed for and deployed within industrial settings (e.g., enterprises, government agencies) to showcase and monitor their operational performance. They have evolved into an important and well-commercialized format for data visualization. In practice, the ideation and negotiation phases demand rapid prototyping and iteration to align with evolving client needs. However, existing tools compel designers to compromise either on iteration speed or on the meticulous handling of visual complexities. To address these gaps, we introduce DashChat for generating performance dashboard prototypes. Collaborating with industry experts, we derived the design requirements and analyzed 114 dashboards to extract common design patterns. Informed by the findings, our solution integrates a chat interface with an LLM-driven multi-agent pipeline, translating textual requirements into prototypes. We evaluated the system by comparing it with a baseline, demonstrating its effectiveness in facilitating the prototyping process while ensuring design quality.