Ask HN: Examples of truly great dashboards?

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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Nowadays there are a couple of products that let you craft your own dashboard like <a href="https://www.leftronic.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.leftronic.com/</a> and <a href="http://www.geckoboard.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.geckoboard.com/</a><p>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: <a href="http://dribbble.com/search?q=dashboard" rel="nofollow">http://dribbble.com/search?q=dashboard</a><p>A really good book on data visualization is "Designing with Data" by Brian Suda: <a href="http://www.designingwithdata.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.designingwithdata.com/</a>

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:<p><a href="https://kippt.com/jtuulos/dashboard-inspiration" rel="nofollow">https://kippt.com/jtuulos/dashboard-inspiration</a><p>I hope you find these helpful. I'll be extending the list based on the suggestions in this thread.

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.<p>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.

I like: <a href="https://public.ducksboard.com/BFVzKVPeOoWRsL0VZ8MZ/" rel="nofollow">https://public.ducksboard.com/BFVzKVPeOoWRsL0VZ8MZ/</a> I love the look previously mentioned <a href="https://www.leftronic.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.leftronic.com/</a> and <a href="http://www.geckoboard.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.geckoboard.com/</a>

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

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

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

Stephen Few [<a href="http://www.perceptualedge.com/examples.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.perceptualedge.com/examples.php</a>] has some nice books and his website has some nice examples.

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