Data Visualization for Dashboards

A dashboard is a tool for fast, accurate judgement under operational stress. Every visual choice supports that judgement or undermines it.

Scope

• In scope: chart selection, encoding accuracy, color, layout and hierarchy, time-series conventions, observability frameworks (RED, USE, Four Golden Signals, SLO/SLI), anti-patterns, review criteria.
• Out of scope:
  • Grafana JSON, panel options, transformations, variables, library panels — dashboards sibling owns mechanics.
  • Alert rule definitions — alerting sibling. This skill covers SLO/SLI dashboard structure, not rule firing.
  • Query syntax — promql / metricsql / logsql siblings.

References