Types of Doughnut chart

Power BI Section

Power BI Section

Types of Doughnut chart

  • 🍩 Doughnut Chart: Understanding & Applying

    A Doughnut Chart is a variation of the pie chart where the center is hollow. This design not only offers a cleaner, more modern look — but also allows you to display additional information in the center, such as totals, KPIs, or even contextual icons.

    Much like pie charts, doughnut charts help visualize part-to-whole relationships, making them ideal for tracking how different components contribute to a total. But with their added flexibility and aesthetics, they’re often preferred in modern dashboards.

    🧭 When to Use Doughnut Charts:

    • Sales Distribution: Visualize which product lines contribute most to total revenue — e.g., Electronics (40%), Apparel (35%), Home Decor (25%).
    • Expense Allocation: Show department-wise breakdown of spending with the total spend (₹ 10 Lakhs) in the center.
    • Customer Segments: Compare user types like New, Returning, and VIPs across total user base.

    📘 Types of Doughnut Charts:

    • Single-Series Doughnut: Best for simple distributions — e.g., revenue by region.
    • Multi-Ring Doughnut: Allows multiple series displayed as concentric rings (available via custom visuals or visuals like “Infographic Designer”).
    • Donut Chart with Card in Center: Combine a doughnut chart and a KPI card to highlight totals or averages dynamically.

    💡 Tip: Avoid overcrowding doughnut charts. Stick to fewer than 6 categories and consider combining small segments into an “Others” group to keep visuals crisp.

    Whether you're creating executive dashboards or interactive reports for stakeholders, doughnut charts bring a balanced blend of form and function — giving insights at a glance while maintaining visual elegance.

    • 🥯 Standard Doughnut Chart:
      This is the most classic form of the doughnut chart. It represents a single data series using colored segments arranged in a circular ring, with a central hole left intentionally blank or used to display a summary value.

      Ideal for visualizing simple part-to-whole relationships, such as how much each department contributes to total expenses, or how different regions contribute to total sales.

      Example: Suppose your organization spends ₹1,000,000 in total monthly expenses:

      • Marketing – ₹300,000 (30%)
      • Operations – ₹250,000 (25%)
      • R&D – ₹150,000 (15%)
      • IT – ₹200,000 (20%)
      • HR – ₹100,000 (10%)

      Displaying this in a doughnut chart provides an instantly readable distribution of the total spend. You can place a center label such as Total: ₹1M or a performance indicator.

    • 🍩 Exploded Doughnut Chart:
      This variation separates one or more segments from the circular ring to emphasize key values or outliers. It’s especially useful when you want to spotlight a dominant category or an underperforming segment that needs attention.

      In Power BI, this can be done using custom visuals or by simulating the effect with formatting tricks — such as increasing slice padding or using color contrast.

      Example: Imagine you're analyzing customer acquisition across four channels:

      • Paid Ads – 50%
      • Organic Search – 20%
      • Email Campaigns – 15%
      • Social Media – 15%

      You want to explode the "Paid Ads" segment to visually show how dominant it is in the overall strategy — making it clear to stakeholders that this channel leads all others significantly.

      📌 Tip: Use exploded doughnut charts sparingly. Overusing the effect can reduce its impact and distract from the main message.

    • 🍥 Multi-Level Doughnut Chart

      A Multi-Level Doughnut Chart (also called a sunburst-style donut chart) allows you to visualize hierarchical relationships using nested rings. Each level of the hierarchy is displayed as a separate ring, starting from the inner circle (top-level category) and moving outward.

      It’s especially powerful when analyzing grouped or layered data — such as product categories and subcategories, departments and teams, or regions and sub-regions.

      Example:

      • Inner ring: Main departments (Sales, Marketing, HR, Operations)
      • Outer ring: Sub-teams (e.g., Inside Sales, Field Sales, Content, SEO, etc.)

      By nesting rings, you give viewers an intuitive way to grasp the proportion of each sub-group within its parent group — something traditional charts struggle to do in one view.

      ✅ Use Case: Useful in HR dashboards, sales breakdowns, or any structure that needs to reflect “parent → child” category relationships.

    • 🏷️ Donut Chart with Labels

      A Donut Chart with Labels displays values or category names directly on the chart, either inside each segment or just outside the perimeter. This improves readability and makes it easier for viewers to interpret each slice without needing to hover or check the legend.

      Labels can include values, percentages, or even category names — and Power BI allows you to customize font size, alignment, and what information appears.

      Example Use Case:

      • Customer Segments: Show the percentage of customers in each demographic group with labels inside slices.
      • Expense Distribution: Add monetary values directly to chart segments for clarity in budgeting visuals.

      💡 Tip: Keep labels short and legible. For tight spaces, try placing them outside the segments and connecting them with leader lines.

    • 🧭 Donut Chart with Legend

      A Donut Chart with Legend supplements the visual display with a labeled key (legend), helping users clearly understand which color corresponds to which category. This is particularly useful when you have several slices or when placing text inside the chart becomes too crowded.

      Power BI allows you to position the legend on the top, bottom, left, or right of the chart. You can also adjust its font size, color, and alignment to match your dashboard’s design.

      Practical Example:

      • Department Budget Allocation: Use a legend to show which colored slice corresponds to departments like HR, IT, Marketing, etc.
      • Customer Types: Visualize user base segments (e.g., New, Returning, VIP, Trial) while keeping the chart clean and readable.

      ✅ Best Practice: Use legends when the chart includes more than 4–5 categories or when labels inside slices overlap. This improves clarity and maintains a clean layout.

    🎯 Use Cases for Doughnut Charts:

    • 📊 Market Share Visualization

      Use doughnut charts to display how market share is divided among competitors. This is particularly useful in industries like:

      • Mobile Phones: Visualize how Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, and others split the global smartphone sales. For instance: Apple (30%), Samsung (25%), Xiaomi (15%), Others (30%).
      • Automotive Industry: Show how different manufacturers contribute to EV market share — Tesla, Ford, BYD, Hyundai, etc.
      • Streaming Platforms: Compare Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, and others by subscriber base or revenue contribution.

      ✅ Best used when the total equals 100% and each segment tells a clear story.

    • 💸 Budget Allocation

      Doughnut charts are ideal for showcasing how an organization's total budget is distributed across departments. This helps leadership and stakeholders visualize funding priorities and spending patterns at a glance.

      • Corporate Budget: HR (20%), R&D (35%), Marketing (25%), Operations (15%), Admin (5%)
      • School or University: Teaching (50%), Facilities (20%), Technology (15%), Student Activities (10%), Miscellaneous (5%)
      • Nonprofit Organization: Program Services (60%), Fundraising (25%), Management (15%)

      📌 Tip: Use consistent color coding (e.g., blue for R&D, orange for Marketing) across multiple visuals to make dashboards easier to navigate.

    • 💼 Revenue Streams

      Doughnut charts are excellent for visualizing different income sources within a business model — especially when revenue diversification is key. It allows stakeholders to quickly understand which stream is most profitable and how others contribute to the total.

      • SaaS Company: Subscriptions (70%), One-time Licensing (20%), Add-ons/Integrations (10%)
      • Media Business: Ad Revenue (40%), Sponsorships (30%), Premium Memberships (20%), Merchandise (10%)
      • E-commerce Platform: Product Sales (60%), Vendor Commissions (25%), Ads/Promotions (15%)

      💡 Tip: Pair doughnut charts with KPI cards at the center hole (e.g., total revenue amount) for a clean and informative look.

    • 🗳️ Survey Feedback

      Doughnut charts make it simple to visualize public sentiment or customer satisfaction in a compact, digestible way. For instance, a customer experience survey might collect results for levels like Satisfied, Neutral, and Unsatisfied.

      • Customer Satisfaction Survey: Satisfied (60%), Neutral (25%), Unsatisfied (15%)
      • Employee Engagement: Highly Engaged (50%), Moderately Engaged (30%), Disengaged (20%)
      • Product Feedback: Excellent (40%), Good (35%), Fair (20%), Poor (5%)

      📌 Note: Use contrasting colors and custom tooltips for each category so respondents' opinions are easy to differentiate at a glance.

    • 🧩 Resource Contribution

      In project management dashboards, it's important to communicate how much each resource or team contributes to the overall project effort. A Doughnut Chart can help project managers and stakeholders instantly visualize team contributions by percentage.

      • Project Alpha: Dev Team – 50%, QA Team – 30%, Design Team – 20%
      • Marketing Campaign: Content – 40%, Social Media – 35%, Analytics – 25%
      • Product Launch: Engineering – 60%, Support – 20%, Training – 20%

      📌 Tip: Add category labels directly on slices or in the center hole (using DAX or a Card visual) for clarity. Tooltips can also display exact contribution in hours or budget alongside percentage.

    ⚠️ Note: Ensure categories are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive when using doughnut charts. This guarantees that the visual proportions represent a complete and accurate whole.

    Comments

    Post a Comment