Shoin Wolfe, Founder at Shoka Sonjuku, says that “good dashboards are GAS.”

What does he mean by that?

“So good dashboards are Governed Actionable Storytelling.

Governed would mean that you have someone has to be in charge of the metric choice. The quality of each chart, the chart type is adjusted according to changing needs. So it's iterable and dynamic.

Actionable is pretty easy. I think the golden rule if it's a metric that doesn't change your behavior, it's a bad metric, right? If that's true for metrics, it's true for dashboards too. I would add to actionable that the charts are interactable. You can do something to the chart. You can look into it. You can segment it. You can deep dive into it.

Storytelling is very important. Does something have a narrative? Is it easily digestible?”

This is a snippet from Good Dashboards vs. Bad Dashboards an How I Amplitude session with Shoin Wolfe, where he talks through patterns he's seen across growth teams and what makes some dashboards drive action, and others leave teams in a reactive state.