Designing dashboards people actually read

The average business dashboard is opened once — on the day it is presented — and never again. The problem is rarely the data. It is that the dashboard answers questions nobody is asking that week.

We rebuilt ours around three principles: one question per view, a number is only useful next to its trend, and every chart must name the action it should trigger.

Since then, our weekly review takes fifteen minutes instead of an hour, and the dashboard is the first tab people open on Monday.