Between cards and tiles, what pattern is acceptable to use on a dashboard?

Question

We are building dashboard for C-level executives for our web app and currently debating on whether we should use cards or tiles in our dashboard. What would be a recommended option from either of these two? Thanks!

Answer 1

That also depends on your content. In my experience tiles are not that scalable if the length and amount of content can vary.

But if you have some fixed graphs (e.g. pie charts, donut charts, line charts) tiles would be a clean choice. Tiles create a clear grid and look neat, but cards can look neat and clean too when implemented in a good way.

If you want the dashboard to be fully-responsive, keep in mind that square tiles will limit the height of the tile (and therefore can limit the amount of content).

Do you have an example by what you exactly mean with cards?

Answer 2

"Tiles" and "cards" are vague terms -- in fact, you could easily argue that tiles are exactly the same thing as cards except without a shadow. If whether to have a shadow is your main question, then:

• Consider the design of the rest of the web app. How are shadows applied? Are they applied at all? Is the rest of the app starkly flat or are there 3D elements throughout? If there are, what are they used for? Do they serve a purpose other than decorative (e.g. they might indicate touch targets or relation to other elements)?
• Also consider any affordances a shadow might give. Does the element move independently, e.g. if swiping it away or expanding it?

Google's Material Design guidelines are a bit more prescriptive, though:

• Cards "display content composed of different elements whose size or supported actions vary."
• Tiles, the elements of a grid list, are "best suited to presenting homogenous data, typically images, and is optimized for visual comprehension and differentiating between similar data types."

I recommend reading through those two pages.