Designing dashboards
A dashboard is a single screen that answers one audience's most important questions at a glance. Try Nakhla's sales dashboard: change the filters and watch everything update together:
Nakhla sales dashboard · January to June 2026
Total sales463,770 SAR▲ 2.9% · Q2 vs Q1
Gross profit155,284 SAR
Gross margin33.5%
Units sold8,411
Made-up training data.
| Know your audience | The CEO wants 5 numbers; the warehouse manager wants daily detail. One dashboard per audience. |
| The five-second rule | If the reader can't get the main message in 5 seconds, simplify. |
| Most important first | Key number cards at the top, where the eye starts (left in English, right in Arabic), details below. |
| Give numbers context | “Sales: 120k” means little. “120k, up 8% on last month, target 130k” means a lot. |
| As few as possible | 6 to 8 visuals at most, with consistent colours: the same region keeps the same colour everywhere. |
Watch outAsk before you design: “what decision will you make from this dashboard?” If there's no decision, you may need a monthly report, not a dashboard.