What is Dashboard Layout?

Dashboard Layout displays key metrics, charts, and data in a scannable, card-based grid structure. It prioritizes at-a-glance information consumption with widgets, graphs, and summaries organized by importance. Standard in analytics tools, admin panels, business intelligence apps, and monitoring interfaces where data-driven decisions happen.

When Should You Use This?

Use dashboard layout for analytics and reporting tools (Google Analytics, Mixpanel), admin panels for SaaS products, business intelligence interfaces (Tableau, Looker), monitoring and observability tools (Datadog, Grafana), and CRM overview screens (Salesforce, HubSpot). Choose this when users need to quickly scan multiple data points and spot patterns or anomalies.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• •Metric overload—showing every possible KPI overwhelms users; prioritize top 5-7 critical metrics
• •No empty states—dashboards with no data look broken; design meaningful empty states with setup guidance
• •Missing customization—forcing same dashboard on all users reduces value; allow personalization
• •Poor responsive design—complex dashboards often break on tablets/mobile; consider mobile-specific views
• •No time context—metrics without time ranges are meaningless; always show date ranges and comparison periods

Real-World Examples

• •Stripe Dashboard—revenue, successful payments, top customers in card-based layout with time range picker
• •Vercel Dashboard—deployments, analytics, bandwidth in grid with status indicators and quick actions
• •Linear—sprint dashboard shows velocity, burndown chart, issue distribution in customizable widgets
• •Grafana—monitoring dashboards with customizable panels, time series charts, and alerting status