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How-to · 7 min read

Dashboard design: 10 principles that get read

A dashboard is not a poster of everything you can measure. It is an answer to a question someone asks regularly. These ten principles come from building dashboards that survived contact with real teams.

By the Klayara teamPublished 26 August 2026

Start with the question

  1. One page, one question. "How did we trade yesterday?" is a dashboard. "Everything about sales" is a filing cabinet.
  2. Name the audience. A store manager and a CFO need different pages, even from the same data.
  3. Put the decision at the top. The number someone will act on goes top-left, large, with its comparison.

Choose charts by job, not by taste

  1. Bars compare, lines trend, tables look up. Pie charts work for two or three parts of a whole, rarely more.
  2. Always show a comparison. Yesterday means little without last week, plan or last year beside it.
  3. Use colour to mean something. One accent for the thing that matters; grey for context. Rainbow palettes hide the point.

Layout and interaction

  1. Group by question, not by chart type. Revenue, its drivers and its exceptions belong together.
  2. Let people click. Clicking a region should filter the page; clicking a number should show the rows behind it.
  3. Design for the phone first. If the Monday numbers are read on the train, the page must reflow.
  4. Show freshness. "Updated 7:02 today" earns trust; a page with no timestamp invites doubt.

Klayara’s templates follow these principles out of the box — pick one, connect your data, and adjust from there. Or let our BI developers design yours.

FAQ

Questions this guide answers.

Something else on your mind? Ask us directly — a person answers.

What should go at the top of a dashboard?

The number someone will act on, top-left, large, with its comparison beside it — yesterday against last week, plan or last year. Everything else supports that number.

When should I use a pie chart on a dashboard?

Only for two or three parts of a whole. Beyond that, readers cannot compare the slices; a sorted bar chart or a stacked bar shows the same data more clearly.

How do I design a dashboard that works on a phone?

Design for the phone first: one question per page, the decision number at the top, charts that reflow into a single column, and a visible last-updated time. If the Monday numbers are read on the train, the page must survive a narrow screen.

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