The Product
A B2B SaaS analytics platform serving marketing, operations, and finance teams at mid-market and enterprise companies. The dashboard was the product's primary surface — the first screen users saw every day and the place they spent the majority of their time.
Over 4 years of growth, the dashboard had accumulated 140+ metrics, 12 chart types, and 8 filter panels — each added reactively to satisfy individual customer requests. The result was a screen that tried to do everything and succeeded at nothing.
140 Metrics, Zero Clarity
Quantitative data confirmed what users were telling us anecdotally. Hotjar session recordings showed users spending an average of 47 seconds on the dashboard before navigating away — a strong indicator that users weren't finding the information they needed quickly enough to justify staying.
Understanding Decision-Making Patterns
The core research question was deceptively simple: What do users actually need to see first thing every day, and what can wait? The answer, it turned out, varied dramatically by role — which led to our progressive disclosure and role-based personalisation strategy.
The most important research finding was the "3 questions" pattern: regardless of role, every user opened the dashboard to answer one of three questions — "How are we doing today?", "What changed since yesterday?", and "What needs my attention right now?" The redesign was built around these three core intents.
Progressive Disclosure as the Core Model
The defining strategic decision was to adopt progressive disclosure as the fundamental UX pattern. Instead of showing everything at once, we designed a three-layer information hierarchy:
Layer 1 — Headline view: 6 role-appropriate KPIs visible immediately on load, with trend indicators and smart anomaly highlights. No scrolling required on any device.
Layer 2 — Standard view: Full dashboard with 24 configurable widgets, expanded charts, and the unified filter system. One click from the headline view.
Layer 3 — Deep dive: All 140 metrics accessible through a searchable metric library, with the ability to build and save custom views. Designed for power users and analysts.
A Dashboard That Thinks With You
The redesigned dashboard opened on a clean, breathable headline view. The visual hierarchy was completely rethought: large, scannable KPI numbers with clear trend indicators at the top; a primary chart relevant to each role centre-stage; smart highlights calling out anomalies the user should know about.
The Smart Highlights panel was a particularly impactful addition. Powered by simple statistical anomaly detection (not ML — deliberately simple to ship quickly), it surfaced the most significant changes since the user's last session. User testing showed this single component reduced the average time-to-insight from 2m18s to 18 seconds.
Validating Every Layer
We ran three rounds of usability testing across the 8-month project — one per major milestone. Testing was conducted via Maze for unmoderated sessions and Zoom for moderated sessions, with a mix of existing customers and recruited participants matching our target personas.
What Changed for 50,000 Users
The redesigned dashboard launched in phases over 6 weeks. Post-launch metrics were measured at 30, 60, and 90 days against the pre-launch baseline.
Beyond the metrics, the redesign created a platform for the product to grow. The widget system and role-based views established a flexible architecture that the engineering team has since used to ship 3 new feature areas without requiring UX rework of the dashboard foundation — a significant multiplier on the original design investment.