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Most dashboards look identical. They work, but they don't stick. Templates are everywhere. AI can generate one in seconds. And yet, every day, tens of thousands of designers come on Mobbin searching for the same thing.
Insights from analyzing 2,108 dashboards reveal what makes dashboards memorable, useful, and engaging for designers and users alike.
Key Takeaways
- Memorable dashboards combine clarity, actionable insights, and visual uniqueness.
- Dashboards serve as a critical product differentiator and user engagement tool.
- AI-enhanced dashboards significantly increase user interaction and reference collection.
- Custom metrics and playful data presentation foster user loyalty.
- Effective dashboards prioritize what to show and what to leave out for better comprehension.
Summary
- Most dashboards look similar and functional but fail to be memorable or engaging.
- Key elements like clear hierarchy, spacing, and useful charts are common but not enough to make dashboards stick.
- Effective dashboards go beyond data display by providing actionable insights alongside charts.
- Visual uniqueness, such as real-time data visualization or playful elements, helps dashboards stand out.
- Dashboards are often the home screen and a key factor in product choice and user retention.
- Mobile dashboards that turn data into engaging, shareable formats increase user interaction.
- Custom metrics and unique data representations create user loyalty and brand identity.
- AI integration in dashboards improves user understanding and doubles saves and exports.
- The best dashboards know what to omit, balancing clarity and aesthetics.
- Ongoing research includes studying onboarding flows and paywalls to improve user experience.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction: The Problem with Most Dashboards
- 00:30Common Dashboard Features and Their Limitations
- 00:57Actionable Insights Beyond Data Display
- 01:16Visual Uniqueness and Real-Time Data Examples
- 01:40Creative and Playful Dashboard Designs
- 01:59The Evolution and Importance of Dashboards
- 02:30Dashboards as a Product Differentiator
- 03:10Mobile Dashboards and Custom Metrics
- 04:04AI’s Role in Enhancing Dashboards
- 04:36Final Thoughts and Upcoming Topics
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Dashboards, mostly web ones. So, why do people keep coming back? Dashboards are the designer's dream selfie. Visually impressive, complex enough to flex, and fit perfectly in one screenshot.
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Fair. I went through 2,108 of them, and look, the obvious stuff is all there. Clear hierarchy, good spacing, useful charts. These are perfectly fine dashboards.
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But, if I close this right now, would you remember any of them? [music] The ones I kept coming back to, they're always one step ahead. Instead of just a line chart, Faith puts the key insights next to [music] it. It doesn't just show
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you what happened. It shows you what to do about it. Origin shows you your weekly recap in a way that's easy to understand, along with a daily market brief with valuable insights.
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After a run, Runner packages your stats into highlights that give you a sense of accomplishment.
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The other pattern was visual. Most dashboards look the same. But, then you see something like Shopify's live view. It lets you monitor store visitors across the globe in real time. Every dot is a real person browsing your store
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somewhere right now. [music] Visitors is a web analytics tool. Most dashboards tend to look busy. Being this clean stands out.
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Front uses a heat map where darker squares just mean busier hours. Cake [music] put a literal birthday cake inside their ownership donut chart.
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Instead of showing an empty table after you've paid all your bills, Mercury lets you play a game.
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You can tell these weren't templates. Someone sat down and thought, "How do I actually make this data make sense to my users so they get it instantly?" I think sometimes we're also buying the dashboard. The word dashboard originally
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had nothing to do with data. Nearly 200 years ago, it was literally a wooden board on a horse carriage used to block mud and horse poop when the horse dashed forward.
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As cars replaced carriages, dashboard became the place for signals. The form [music] keeps changing. The job never changed. Today, nearly one in five products on Mobbin have their dashboard as the home [music] screen. When we're choosing between Shopify and 10 other
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platforms that do roughly the same thing, the dashboard does a lot of the convincing.
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One screenshot that tells you exactly what this product does, how you're doing, and what to do next.
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A lot of the dashboards that stood out to me were on mobile. Opal turns screen time insights into a format like Instagram story. You swipe through your own data like it's content.
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When something looks this good, people are bound to share it. Orbit makes tracking subscriptions weirdly enjoyable.
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And then there's this whole thing where some products start coining their own metrics. Duolingo made streaks a thing.
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Oura gives you a readiness score. Instead of saying, "I worked out for 30 minutes today," an Apple user might just say, "I closed my rings." Once that happens, it's very unlikely that this person would change to another fitness
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tracker. We've all had a moment staring at a dashboard asking, "Why? What changed? What caused this spike?" That's the gap [music] AI is filling. Sometimes as subtle as a single prompt right below your chart, [music] or a full AI layer you can talk to right
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alongside your data. On Mobbin, AI dashboards get about twice the saves and exports of the average dashboard screen. It reveals that [music] designers are actively collecting these as references.
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Thousands of dashboards later, I keep going back to that one simple gut check. Would I screenshot this, and why?
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Because the dashboards that I would screenshot weren't the prettiest ones. They were the ones that knew what to leave out, and they just happened to look good doing it. We've also studied thousands of onboarding flows to find out what works. Turns out an effective
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onboarding flow isn't about keeping it short. In the next episode, you're going to love this because we are actively working on a video on paywalls. So, subscribe [music] so you don't miss it.
Topics:dashboardsdata visualizationUX designMobbinAI dashboardsuser engagementproduct designmobile dashboardscustom metricsdesign inspiration
