---
title: Dashboard Disease
slug: dashboard-disease
kind: anti-pattern
summary: Everything becomes a dashboard — numbers, charts and tiles — even though the people opening it came to do work, not to look at work.
problem: >-
  The home screen is six KPIs and three charts. Every person who opens it reads
  none of them and clicks through to the list they actually needed. The most
  visited screen in the product answers a question nobody asked.
family: [orient, scan]
principles: [surface-dont-bury, progressive-disclosure]
status: stable
visibility: public
related:
  - title: Inbox-First Application
    url: /patterns/inbox-first-application
    summary: The alternative front door — open on what needs a person, not on a summary.
  - title: Choosing the Right Chart
    url: /cookbook/choosing-the-right-chart
    summary: For the dashboards that ARE warranted — which chart answers which question.
---

## How you get here

Dashboards are requested by the people who commission software and used by the
people who do not. A manager asks for visibility, the request is entirely
reasonable, and the result is placed at the front door because that is where
important things go.

Then it spreads. Every section gets a summary strip. Every list gets tiles above
it. Each addition is defensible and the cumulative effect is a product where the
first screen of everything is a report.

## How to recognise it

- The home screen has no action on it.
- Analytics show people leaving the landing screen within seconds, always
  towards the same list.
- Nobody can say what decision any given number would change.
- The numbers are exact where nobody needs precision, and absent where somebody
  does.
- Charts have three data points.
- Asked why a tile is there, the answer is "so people can see it", not "so
  people can decide something".

## Why it fails

A number is only useful if it **changes what someone does**. Most dashboard
tiles fail that test: revenue this month is interesting, and the person looking
at it has no lever attached to it on that screen.

Meanwhile the actual work — the seven things waiting on this person — is one
click away and invisible. So the product's most prominent surface is spending
its position on the smallest audience, on every visit, for everyone.

There is a second cost. Because a dashboard is never finished, it provides no
sense of completion. Software people work *through* feels different from
software people look *at*, and the difference shows up in whether they open it.

## The way out

1. **Ask what decision each number changes.** If none, it is not a metric, it is
   trivia. Move it to a report someone visits deliberately.
2. **Put the work first.** Most internal products should open on
   [what needs the person](/patterns/inbox-first-application), with the numbers
   reachable rather than resident.
3. **Attach an action to any number that survives.** "$21,400 overdue" should be
   a link into the filtered list, not a tile.
4. **Do not chart three numbers.** Print them.
5. **Give managers their own page.** The reporting need is real; it just is not
   the same screen as the operator's front door, and pretending otherwise serves
   neither.

## The distinction worth keeping

This is not an argument against dashboards. A dashboard is the right screen for
someone whose job **is** monitoring — an on-call view, a live operations wall, a
weekly review. The disease is not having one; it is making it the default answer
to "what should this screen be", and putting it in front of people whose job is
something else.

## The test

Watch someone open the product. If the first thing they do is navigate away from
the landing screen, that screen is a toll, not a home — and it is being paid by
everyone, every day.