https://blog.panoply.io/dashboard-101-basics-of-a-great-dashboard

What is a Dashboard

• A dashboard is a type of graphical user interface which often provides at-a-glance views of key performance indicators relevant to a particular objective or business process. 
• Dashboards should be used as a medium to tell a story.
  • Messages delivered as stories are 22x more memorable than just facts.
  • Data storytelling is taking a pile of numbers and turning them into a language and a compelling message that everyone can understand.
  • Think of this as providing a guided tour through the data.

Start with a vision

• Create a dashboard that provides busy execs something they can understand at a glance.

Outline the story

• What questions do I need answered?
• What metrics are required to answer these questions?

Perform my analysis

• Often while trying to figure out a problem, new problems may arise that need answers before you’re able to answer the original question.
• Finding needles in the haystack often helps tell the story.

Final Design

Know my audience

• Start with most important data, aka, sharpest needles, first.

Choose the right chart for the data being represented

• It is recommend to ultimately choose charts that most people are familiar with and understand how to read.

Add helpful text

• At a minimum, a chart should have a title that includes details about the measures and categories being displayed.
• Consider adding legends or values as labels.
• Keep text near the lines in a line chart (or near the bar in a bar chart) helps the viewer to more easily make the connection between the two.

Use color effectively

• Guide the audience to the point you’re trying to make.
• Use bolder colors for more informative data.
  • Current month’s sales
  • Most important information / greatest impact
• Use muted or grayed colors for less important data
  • Previous months’ sales
  • Less important information
    • This does not mean “smaller numbers”.  When looking for areas of improvement, smaller numbers may point to areas that can have the biggest impact.

Consider color blindness

• Red and Green are difficult to distinguish.
• Opt for Orange (red) and Blue (green) alternatives instead.

Putting it all together

• Collaboration is king!
  • Involve the stake holders to ensure the dashboard is providing the data they need
  • This also helps you know your audience better.
• Data literacy
  • Be familiar and comfortable with the data.
• Understand data evolves
  • Dashboards should be flexible to accommodate evolving products and changing business strategies.