At a glance
- 1366×768Standard canvas
- Org-wideAudience
The problem
Dashboards were built one at a time, each deciding for itself where the filters live, how big the title is, what a red number means. No single dashboard was bad. The problem was that every one had to be learned separately, and every author spent their first hour on layout instead of on the question they were answering.
The fix was not a style police. It was making the considered choice the easy one.
The layout
Anatomy of the template
The standard layout every dashboard starts from. Same regions, same places, so a reader who learns one knows where to look in all of them.
- 1Title
States the one question the dashboard answers.
- 2Filters
Always top right, in the same place on every dashboard, so people stop hunting for them.
- 3Section tabs
Capped at seven, past which a menu stops being scannable.
- 4Charts
Reserved for the charts, with an info button for context that would otherwise clutter them.
- 5Metadata
Owner, last refresh and metric definitions. The difference between a chart people look at and one they act on.
Getting it adopted
A template nobody knows about changes nothing. This one was introduced in a webinar open to the whole organisation, then documented on a page that stays current, with the guidelines and worked examples alongside it.
Writing it down gave people a shared vocabulary for critiquing a dashboard: it is easier to point to a guideline than to say you do not like it.