Update: Group Breakdown User Experience Redesign Completed

Update 7/24/2026:

The Group Breakdown user experience redesign is now complete across all applicable Campus Data Warehouse dashboards.

The redesign was implemented across dashboards and data models supporting Admissions, Enrollment, Courses and Grades, Retention and Graduation, Degrees, Credentials, and other areas of analysis. Previous dashboard updates introduced the redesigned controls in stages as enhancements moved into production.

The redesigned interaction combines the Group Breakdown category and field into a single control. This streamlined approach:

• Makes it faster and more efficient to discover and apply grouping fields

• Allows related Group Breakdowns to appear together

• Enables searches using either category or field names

• Reduces the number of controls required, particularly on Multilevel Crosstab tables

• Creates a simpler and more consistent experience across dashboards

This solution was informed by collaboration with the Data User Advisory Group, user experience consultation with Francine Lontoc from University Communications, and usability testing with campus users. Six individual testing sessions evaluated five redesign options through common dashboard scenarios. Feedback from those sessions and subsequent DUAG workshops helped narrow the options and informed the final design.

Thank you to DUAG participants, Francine Lontoc, and all the users who participated in testing and provided feedback throughout this process! Your involvement helped ensure that the final redesign addressed actual usability needs and make working with Campus Data Warehouse dashboards more intuitive.

This project supports CSUMB’s strategic-plan priorities to use data-driven approaches that advance student success and to continuously improve university processes and infrastructure while providing a high-quality campus experience.

All Group Breakdown redesign updates are now available in Campus Data Warehouse production.

The Campus Data Warehouse team is aware of usability issues with the Group Breakdown controls in QuickSight and is currently exploring alternative configurations.  Over the summer, we will test a few different options with selected users and the Data User Advisory Group to identify a more friendly user experience for these dashboard controls. Please stay tuned for more details and participate when we reach out to the user community for feedback.

Ticket: 24421822  Service: Accessibility & User Experience (UX) / User Experience Design & Research Date created: Mon 5/5/25 11:25 AM Pacific Daylight Time Title: UX Issues with Group Breakdown Controls in Campus Data Warehouse The way data grouping functionality on the dashboards was implemented with cascading dashboard controls in our new system (QuickSight) is not working well. It does not optimize searching for available grouping fields. Users frequently get confused about the steps that are involved in searching for and changing selections. Overview of how the interaction is currently implemented: Users have to first select a "Category" for the Group Breakdown  Users then use a second "Group Breakdown" control to select from the available Grouping variables  The selected "Group Breakdown" field gets passed into the visualizations to group the data Users get confused about having to first select a category, and also that they cannot easily search the "Group Breakdowns" list since the "Category" control limits the values in the control to the available Group Breakdowns in that category.  We have some different designs available for the interaction that I'm looking into, and we'd like to test 2-3 scenarios with potential dashboard users before we implement. At least 50% of our dashboards will need to be updated with the new design. We plan on running the options by our Data User Advisory Group in our June 25 workshop, but we'd like to test sometime in mid-June with a few campus data users who may not have much experience with the data warehouse. Requested by: Michael Dorsch Created by: Michael Dorsch on Mon 5/5/25 11:25 AM Pacific Daylight Time