Configurable Dashboards

The dashboard is the first screen every user lands on after login, meant to update them on their projects at a glance and act as a springboard into deeper areas. Its static, generic layout ignored the logged-in user's role and usage pattern, resulting in low engagement. This work coincided with moving the navigation to the top, as well as a full rebrand.

Engagement analytics showed which widgets users interacted with versus which they ignored, and support tickets flagged people rebuilding the same information elsewhere because the dashboard did not surface it for them. The pattern was consistent: the generic layout was not wrong for everyone, it was optimal for no one.

Scoro, Teamwork and Monday were benchmarked to see how each treated the dashboard as a landing screen. All three used modular, user-customisable widgets rather than a single fixed layout, confirming this was an established category expectation and setting the baseline the redesign needed to meet.

The core decision was to let users configure and reorder their own widgets rather than ship a smarter one-size default. From there we worked through every dashboard, widget and page, deciding what to keep as-is, rebuild or cut. Each item was scored against rebrand, top-nav and new-feature needs, then given a redevelopment timing.

The IA work mapped the platform's navigation and the structure behind each dashboard, from the top-level nav down to individual widget placement. It also defined the dashboard edit flow, covering the widget library, drag-to-reorder, default filters and how users would switch between and customise their own dashboards.

Low-fidelity wireframes explored how each dashboard would work for different roles, from Project Manager to Finance, Resource and Operations Managers through to clients. Sketching each layout by hand surfaced which widgets each role needed to see first, before committing any structure to high-fidelity design.

Two dashboard prototypes were tested on UsabilityHub, and the open feedback was coded into recurring positive and negative themes. A Venn diagram mapped which qualities were unique to each prototype and which overlapped. The shared positives, which were colour, clarity and readability, set the direction for the final design.

Every dashboard layout is built on the same foundational 12-column grid, so widget widths can range from a single column to full width while staying aligned to a shared structure. A single view can carry anywhere from one to four widgets across without breaking column alignment or needing a bespoke arrangement each time.

Each widget was designed as a self-contained module that could sit in any column position without breaking the shared layout. The set spanned finance widgets, resource widgets, reviews and tasks widgets, activity feeds and project alerts, each built to surface the most relevant information first for the role viewing it.

The Dashboard Manager is where the configuration decision becomes something users can act on. From the homepage they can set any dashboard as their own, duplicate or edit it, then drop widgets into fixed grid positions, reorder them and set view and edit permissions per user or group.

The dashboard moved from a single static layout to a modular system users could reorder and prioritise themselves, so the first screen after login reflected each user's role and usage rather than one generic arrangement. New layouts could be explored and shipped without a full design-to-handoff cycle for every variation.