Here I have selected a typical dashboard screenshot from the Internet.
First of all, let’s look at the question, what is a dashboard?
For administrators(admin) at the back end of a website, a dashboard helps them to view data and manage the website.
For users of online services, dashboard makes them know better about their services with distinguishable icons, numbers and of course, charts. The charts are of different forms to present data.
In short, a dashboard is the home page of a control panel. A customized dashboard can be used to present anything the user wants. Followers at Social Networks, updates of news, weather, stock status, income, outcome, taxes, emails, and so on. With a useful dashboard, you don’t need a secretary to be a boss. You get the sense of control.
I have once interviewed with a company, who focus on building the control backend for companies, and they asked me how to design the layout of a dashboard. And here is my answer:
- Separate modules on the dashboard with consistent gaps,
- Use consistent and simple icons and charts to simplify the contents on the dashboard,
- Choose distinct color for different modules,
- Last and the most important, a dashboard doesn’t need to be fancy, but meaningful to users
Dashboard is really common nowadays, we can find it on Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, WordPress, GoDaddy and many other websites, most of which are offering web hosting and managing services.
As I’m going to build one dashboard now, I’ll make it useful at first, and add more functions and decorations step by step. Hope I can build something like the image posted above. 😀