Dashboard design

Why it matters

A dashboard is a set of charts and numbers, usually on one screen, that someone checks regularly to monitor something and decide what to do. Most dashboards fail not because of bad charts but because nobody decided who it was for and what decision it supports. The result is 25 tiles, five filters and no clear message, and people go back to asking the analyst for a spreadsheet.

Good dashboard design starts on paper, long before any BI tool.

Three kinds of dashboard

• Strategic (executives, checked weekly or monthly): a handful of top-level KPIs against targets, with trends. "Are we on track?"
• Operational (team leads, checked daily or live): current status and exceptions. "What needs attention right now?" Think support queue size, orders stuck in shipping.
• Analytical (analysts, explored as needed): filters and breakdowns for investigating why something changed.

Trying to make one dashboard serve all three usually serves none. Pick one.

The design process

1. Name the audience and their decisions. Write one sentence: "The support team lead checks this every morning to decide where to assign agents." If you cannot write this sentence, you are not ready to build.

2. List the questions. From the decision, list three to five questions. "How many tickets are open? Is the queue growing? Which category is backed up? Are we meeting the 24-hour response target?"

3. Choose KPIs and charts for each question. Each question gets one tile: a big number (with comparison), a trend line, a sorted bar chart, or a short table. Use the chart-choice rules from Module 1.

4. Add comparison to every number. "1,240 open tickets" means nothing alone. "1,240 open tickets, up 18% vs last Monday, target under 1,000" tells the reader whether to worry. Comparisons can be: vs target, vs previous period, vs same period last year, or vs average.

5. Lay out by priority. People read screens in an F or Z pattern: top-left first. Put the most important KPI there, a row of headline numbers across the top, trends in the middle, and detail (breakdowns, tables) at the bottom.

6. Keep it to one screen. If it scrolls, the bottom is rarely seen. Five to nine tiles is a sensible range.

7. Decide filters sparingly. A date range and one key dimension (region, team) are often enough. Every filter is something the reader has to set correctly.

Worked example: support team lead

Audience: support team lead, every morning. Decision: where to assign agents today.

Wireframe (sketched as boxes on paper):

+----------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+
| Open tickets   | New yesterday  | Median first   | % within 24h   |
| 1,240 (+18%)   | 410 (-3%)      | response 6.2h  | 91% (target 95)|
+----------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+
| Open tickets per day, last 30 days (line, target line at 1,000)   |
+-----------------------------------+-------------------------------+
| Open tickets by category (sorted  | Oldest 10 open tickets        |
| bars, Shipping highlighted)       | (table: id, age, category)    |
+-----------------------------------+-------------------------------+
Filters: date range, team.  Data refreshed hourly from the help desk.

Each tile answers one question from step 2. The headline row uses colour only for the KPI that misses its target. The table at the bottom is actionable: the lead can assign those exact tickets.

Practical details that build trust

• Show when the data was refreshed and where it comes from.
• Define every metric, in a tooltip or an "About" panel: what counts as "open"? Are spam tickets excluded?
• Use consistent colours: if Shipping is orange in one tile, it is orange everywhere.
• Round sensibly: 6.2h, not 6.18734h.

Common mistakes

• Building first and asking questions later.
• Vanity metrics (total sign-ups ever) that only go up and never change a decision.
• Gauges and speedometers that use a lot of space for one number.
• Every tile a different colour scheme.
• No comparisons, so nobody can tell good from bad.

Quick recap

• One audience, one set of decisions, three to five questions.
• One tile per question, each number with a comparison.
• Most important at top-left; detail at the bottom; one screen; few filters.
• Show definitions and refresh times.

Try it

The Do tab walks you through sketching a dashboard on paper for one audience of your choice.