Stop Building “Chart Zoos”: Why You Must Start with Questions
Why "What chart should I use?" is the absolute last question you should be asking.
When a stakeholder asks for a dashboard, the temptation is to immediately open your design tool and start drawing charts.
Resist that urge.
Starting with visuals without understanding the user’s needs and pain points is a direct path to failure. Or more precisely, it is the path to building a ”Zoo of Exotic Charts.” You know the type: visualizations that look beautiful in a portfolio but are confusing and impractical for actual work.
Users don’t come to your dashboard to admire colorful bars or intricate shapes. They come to:
Solve problems.
Gather insights.
Leave with clarity.
To deliver that clarity, you must ignore the chart types (for now) and start asking your stakeholders and users the right questions.
The Discovery Checklist
Before drawing a single bar or line, ask:
The Goal: What is the objective of this dashboard?
The Problem: What specific issue are we solving?
The Users: Who are they, what are they looking for, and why?
The Context: How does this fit into their daily workflow?
The Action: What are their next steps once they see this data?
Notice what’s missing? There is no question about pie charts, heat maps, or sankey diagrams.
Those answers come last. The answers to the user-centric questions will dictate the dashboard’s architecture. Once you understand the intent, the chart type becomes obvious.
Don’t work backward from a cool visual. If you do, you aren’t building an analytics tool for users—you’re just building a zoo for stakeholders.