Dashboard

A dashboard is a single screen that gathers several charts and key numbers about one topic — sales, website health, a hospital ward — so a viewer can grasp the current state at a glance and, ideally, without scrolling. Like a car's dashboard, it is meant for monitoring: a quick, repeated check rather than a deep one-time read.

Good dashboards answer a small set of well-chosen questions and put the most important number where the eye lands first. The common failure is cramming in every available metric until nothing stands out; a dashboard that shows everything ends up communicating nothing, so ruthless selection is the real skill.