{"id":1366,"slug":"used-vs-vanity-dashboard-criteria","title":"Five criteria separating a used dashboard from a vanity one: built for daily user / every metric tied to decision+threshold / embedded in existing workflow / trusted / few metrics (~5-7 per view)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","smb-owner","candid-team"],"topics":["editorial-discipline","dashboards","decision-linked-metrics"],"reference_body":"**Synthesis (practitioner consensus):** A *used* dashboard is:\n\n1. **Built for the daily user**, not the executive who requested it.\n2. **Every metric tied to a specific decision and an action threshold**.\n3. **Embedded into an existing workflow / ritual** (the dashboard that is not in the morning email or the Monday meeting gets replaced by a spreadsheet screenshot).\n4. **Trusted** — numbers reconcile with the source system, or users defect to Excel.\n5. **Few metrics** (practitioners suggest **~5-7 per view**).\n\n**Source:** Practitioner synthesis (Domo, ThoughtSpot, Looker, Metabase).\n\n**Confidence:** Industry-consensus.\n\n**Why this matters for Candid:** Operationalises [[rule-qualify-every-metric-with-decision-and-threshold]]. The friction-fit point (\"if it is not in the existing workflow it gets replaced by a spreadsheet screenshot\") matches the customer-facing-calculators brief's point about pairing a calculator with a 5-minute follow-up SLA ([[rule-pair-calculator-with-five-minute-followup]]) — infrastructure without ritual is dead.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-dashboards-smb-june-2026","title":"Research brief: dashboards for SMBs — what's worth showing, and when an embedded one earns its keep (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"what-would-i-do-if-it-moved-test","title":"The \"what would I do if this number doubled or halved tomorrow?\" test — if no action follows, it's vanity","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"dashboard-rot-schema-drift-maintenance","title":"Dashboard rot: data sources change schemas, metric definitions drift across departments, organizational attention wanes; custom/embedded builds carry the heaviest ~20-30%/yr maintenance burden","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"rule-qualify-every-metric-with-decision-and-threshold","title":"R1 — Before building any dashboard, qualify every proposed metric: named owner + named decision + action threshold; if it fails the \"what would I do if it moved?\" test, drop it","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-20T18:03:12.175Z","updated_at":"2026-06-20T18:03:12.175Z"}