Product
Why do dashboards feel harder than they need to?
A closer look at information, hierarchy, and the decisions that make complex products easier to use.
7 min readPublished
Most dashboards are built by adding. Every team has a number it cares about, and every number earns a tile. Over time the screen stops answering questions and starts asking them.
The problem is rarely too much data. It is too little hierarchy.
Start with the question, not the metric
Before deciding what a dashboard shows, ask what someone needs to decide when they open it. The answer usually fits in a sentence, and that sentence tells you what belongs at the top.
Let some things be secondary
Not every number deserves equal weight. When everything is emphasised, nothing is. Grouping, spacing, and progressive detail do more for clarity than another chart type.