Dashboards people actually read

Most dashboards are built once, admired for a week and then ignored. We looked at how our customers use theirs, and found that the dashboards people open every week share a few simple habits. Here they are.

Start with a question

A good dashboard answers one question. "How is the product doing?" is too broad. "Are new users reaching their first report this week?" is a dashboard. Write the question at the top, in plain words. If a chart does not help answer it, move it somewhere else.

We looked at four thousand dashboards in Tally. The ones opened most often had a median of six charts. The ones nobody opened after the first month had a median of nineteen.

Put the most important number first

People read a screen like a page: top left first. Put the one number that matters there, big. Put the charts that explain it below. Detail goes at the bottom, for the people who need it.

Show a comparison

A number alone means little. 1,240 signups: is that good? Compared with last week, last month or a goal, it starts to mean something. Every important number should have a comparison next to it, and the comparison should be the same every time, so people learn to read it.

A number without a comparison is just trivia.

Tom Becker

Use words

Add a short line of text to each chart: what it shows, and what normal looks like. "Signups per day. Normal is 150–200; Mondays are higher." This turns a chart into something anyone in the company can read, not just the person who built it.

Make it boring

Avoid 3D charts, gauges and pie charts with nine slices. Use lines for change over time, bars for comparing things and single numbers for single numbers. Use colour to highlight, not to decorate: one accent colour for the thing that matters, grey for everything else.

Review it

Put a monthly reminder in your calendar to look at each dashboard and ask: did anyone use this chart? Delete what nobody used. A dashboard is a garden, not a monument.