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Designing for Power BI — the mental-model shift

A practical guide for UX/UI designers coming from web and product design.

When designing a web application, Figma usually describes a UI that developers reproduce with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and a component framework. When designing for Power BI, Figma describes a report composition built from an existing analytical runtime.

That changes the designer's role.

Web design asks: *what interface should we build?* Power BI asks: *what does the user need to understand or investigate, and which Power BI capability supports that?*

A Power BI report is an interactive, multi-page analytical document connected to a semantic model. Its native interaction model already includes filtering, cross-filtering, cross-highlighting, drill, drillthrough, slicers, tooltips, bookmarks and navigation.

Final principle. In web design, Figma can describe the interface you want developers to build. In Power BI, Figma should describe the best analytical experience that can be created sustainably using Power BI's data model, native components and interaction model.