Designing a dashboard for decisions

The short version

Dashboards are often assembled as collections of charts. A decision-oriented dashboard starts somewhere else: with the decisions the team makes every week.

Put the baseline first, make the comparison obvious, and show enough context to explain a change without opening five more reports. A small number of clear panels can carry more trust than a wall of metrics.

The visual system should also expose uncertainty. A useful empty state, comparison label, or coverage note is part of the product, not an apology for it.