

Ask HN: Examples of truly great dashboards? - grantjgordon

Every project I've ever worked on has required a dashboard of some sort at some point or another.  Yet I've never been able to find more than a few decent examples to learn from.  A few that come to mind are:<p>Chartbeat
Google Analytics<p>Do you have any web or mobile application dashboards that you love?  Or even like?<p>Thanks in advance!
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ejpastorino
Getting a good dashboard is really a hard task. It varies from business to
business. The important thing is to identify some metrics and KPIs you want to
be aware of.

Initially, it would show very few metrics or charts that can give you a quick
snapshot of the business so you can see how it's performing very quickly. But
it should be possible to dig into more data and visualize it in many different
ways to get better insights.

On most apps I've worked, we've always opted to build out own dashboard
because there was no out-of-the-box solution. We would gather data from inside
the app and also use some external services like mixpanel or google analytics.
Also, lately I've been moving towards more custom charts and graphs made with
d3.js which is extremely powerful.

Nowadays there are a couple of products that let you craft your own dashboard
like <https://www.leftronic.com/> and <http://www.geckoboard.com/>

You can get some ideas there and by looking similar products. MixPanel and
KissMetrics also provide some inspiration. And doing a search on dribbble can
give you some ideas also: <http://dribbble.com/search?q=dashboard>

A really good book on data visualization is "Designing with Data" by Brian
Suda: <http://www.designingwithdata.com/>

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grantjgordon
Thanks for your thoughts and links! I especially like geckoboard, and I'm a
big fan of Brian Suda. The challenge for me is definitely in the laying out of
the unique data for that particular context in a visually appealing way. I
guess what I'm trying to do, when you really boil it down, is assemble a
toolbox of some tricks to use as starting points from a design perspective,
and these are really helping.

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juriga
I'm currently working on something that involves creating lots of custom
dashboards. Here's a list of examples that I collected for design inspiration:

<https://kippt.com/jtuulos/dashboard-inspiration>

I hope you find these helpful. I'll be extending the list based on the
suggestions in this thread.

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grantjgordon
Thank you, sir! These help a lot!

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caw
I have a couple of dashboards that I like, but they're not publicly available.
I have graphs where literally every pixel on the line is a datapoint, and I'm
displaying 5 or 6 datasets on the same graph.

Try reading up on some of Edward Tufte's material. The dashboards that I like
tend to follow his style closely. There's also a Tufte training class you can
go to; some of my co-workers went last year. It's rather inexpensive as far as
training goes.

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grantjgordon
Tufte is fantastic. I've read a few of his books, and I completely agree.
Thanks for the help! :)

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crisnoble
I like: <https://public.ducksboard.com/BFVzKVPeOoWRsL0VZ8MZ/> I love the look
previously mentioned <https://www.leftronic.com/> and
<http://www.geckoboard.com/>

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sonofabell
Hi guys, I'm one of the founders of Leftronic. Please check out our solution -
I'm sure you'll be impressed. If you have any feedback/questions/concerns,
please email me: rajiv at leftronic dot com.

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ig1
The book "Information Dashboard Design" is a good starting point for the
fundamentals.

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dglassan
If you're looking for design inspiration then check out the admin themes on
themeforest.net, lots of great examples there if you filter by # of sales.
Although it won't give you a lot of ideas as far as functionality goes

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mnicole
In addition to the great links others have posted, I've got some strewn about
in my UI collection - <http://lookwork.com/mandy/library/ui>

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paperwork
Stephen Few [<http://www.perceptualedge.com/examples.php>] has some nice books
and his website has some nice examples.

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grantjgordon
Thanks for the link!

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debacle
Magento, for all of its faults, has a pretty excellent dashboard for an
eCommerce product.

