What is a dashboard for? Who opens it and what they decide with it

Before you read anything, answer these three questions based on what you think right now. They aren't graded: you'll see the same three at the end of the course and can compare.

Why almost nobody opens a dashboard

A lot of abandoned dashboards start with a request like this: "We want an appointments dashboard." Somebody pulls together everything there is (appointments by day, by doctor, by specialty, revenue, cancellations, ratings), lays it all out on one screen and presents it. The first week, people open it out of curiosity. After that, everyone goes back to asking for their numbers by email, because the dashboard has a little of everything and answers nobody's question.

The problem is almost never the tool or the design. A dashboard built for everyone works for no one in particular. The one that gets used answers one question one person asks often, to make one decision they already make anyway, dashboard or not. The dashboard just makes that decision faster and better informed.

The purpose, in one sentence

Before you open Excel, Power BI, Looker Studio or a chat with your AI, write this sentence:

Every [when], [who] uses this dashboard to decide [what].

For Clínica Alba, it reads:

Every Monday morning, Lucía uses this dashboard to decide which site gets the confirmation-call team this week, and whether to open extra slots on any schedule.

Notice everything that sentence already rules out. Quarterly revenue doesn't help Lucía decide where to send the calls: it matters to leadership, on a different dashboard. Patient-level detail doesn't either: Lucía decides by site, not by person. And since she decides on Mondays, the period that matters is the week that just ended, not today and not the year.

If you don't know who decides what with your dashboard, tell your Maestro what you were asked for.

Here's how you get to that sentence when all you have is the request:

That last step looks like a formality, and it's the one that saves you the most: fixing a sentence takes a minute; fixing a finished dashboard takes weeks, and usually nobody fixes it at all. People just stop opening it.

Two things that help at work:

• If the person asking and the person deciding are different people, like the director and Lucía here, design for the one who decides. The person who asked usually just wants to know the decision got made, and that fits in one line at the bottom.
• If nobody decides anything with it, what you were asked for is a report: a snapshot that gets read once. That's useful too, but it's designed differently and doesn't need to refresh every week.

Try it

Think of a dashboard you use, one you were asked to build, or one you wish you had. Write its purpose with the sentence above: when, who, and what they decide. If you don't know, write down who you'd ask. Your Maestro will tell you whether your decision is concrete or still just a topic. If your sentence feels vague, ask your Maestro to walk you through the questions from the example.