Have you ever been tasked with building a live dashboard that looks like a slick sale pitch slide? You spend a whole lot of time hue-ing the bar chart, and you got asked to change the bars into curvy line because it will make it look more like GA…

And it collects, like, 2 views in 3 weeks after release day, 0 follow-up question, 0 export.

Well, the good news is you don’t have to maintain it anymore. The bad news is your very existence as an Analyst is now in doubt, or at least in that company. The ugly news, I got for you right there: the dashboard is useless, and it’s made just to make somebody feel important.

Gruesome, right ?!

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So what is a useful dashboard? You may ask.

Dashboards are useless if they are not actionable.

A dashboard is useful when it bias the reader toward action. Any action. It could lead to changing a marketing practice or start selling a different product, etc… However, one should never mistake the of the well-built positively informed dashboard with a useless one (For example, a health check report will all negatives in diseases checkbox). Here, the action is to keep the wheels rolling.

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On how to build a non-dumb-blonde dashboard

Things on the dashboard are answers to the questions asked in the process of building it.

So by ensuring 1/ the right questions are asked and 2/ right answers are provided timely, one can build a good dashboard.

Most of the questions asked in the interview for the Analyst position is about the 2/. That’s only 50%.

Asking the right questions is the first and foremost important thing.