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)

Synthesis (practitioner consensus): A used dashboard is:

1. Built for the daily user, not the executive who requested it.
2. Every metric tied to a specific decision and an action threshold.
3. 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).
4. Trusted — numbers reconcile with the source system, or users defect to Excel.
5. Few metrics (practitioners suggest ~5-7 per view).

Source: Practitioner synthesis (Domo, ThoughtSpot, Looker, Metabase).

Confidence: Industry-consensus.

Why this matters for Candid: Operationalises 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. 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 (R6 — A lead-capturing calculator is wasted infrastructure without a 5-minute follow-up SLA; build the SLA first) — infrastructure without ritual is dead.