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storytelling with data podcast: #92 Why Dashboards Die—and How to Save Them With Allison Horst

·50 min

1. storytelling with data podcast #92 focuses on why dashboards die and how to save them with Allison Horst. 2. Simon is the host, and Alison Horst is the guest from Observable whose work on collaboration and data products shapes the discussion. 3. The episode asks how dashboard teams can keep data products used, valued, and updated instead of letting them become a “dashboard graveyard.” 4. Simon opens with a banking analytics rebuild where the business reacted badly because familiar metrics disappeared from the new platform. 5. He says the team changed course by securing executive sponsorship from two senior leaders who attended weekly huddles and sprint sessions. 6. Alison describes an academic path from environmental science to a PhD in nanotoxicology, then learning R to visualize complex environmental data. 7. She says over a decade of teaching at UC Santa Barbara in data analysis, data science, data visualization, and science communication taught her how students rush into building before asking enough questions. 8. Alison links that teaching experience to Observable, where she works on the developer relations team helping people build more used and valued data products. 9. Simon and Alison return repeatedly to the idea that collaboration has to start early, not at the “first draft” stage. 10. They frame dashboard work as a relationship between people producing data and people requesting it, not as a one-way service ticket. 11. Alison calls an analyst’s follow-up work “being a hype man for their work,” meaning teams need reminders and context to keep dashboards relevant. 12. She says people are busy and that a dashboard is rarely the only thing a user has bookmarked. 13. Simon describes a weekly leadership dashboard that lost impact after the first few sessions because the same metrics stopped generating discussion. 14. He explains that shifting the meeting to one KPI or one deep dive made the sessions more engaging and easier to run. 15. The episode also contrasts technically correct charts with the most useful chart, especially in highly skewed business histograms. 16. Alison gives an example of focusing a histogram on the lower tail while keeping a distinct indicator for observations beyond the focus so the chart stays accurate and readable. 17. Simon and Alison describe chart selection as living in “gray areas,” where there is rarely one right answer and context matters. 18. The conversation stays interview-style and practical, with Simon drawing on his own dashboard work and Alison responding with teaching and product examples. 19. Best for data analysts, dashboard builders, and managers who want dashboards used. 20. Skip if you want a purely technical tutorial with fixed rules.

As heard by us

A steady reminder that dashboards need ongoing use, not just good design.

This episode makes a plain point: a dashboard can be well built and still fade out of daily use. Simon's banking background gives that idea weight, with reporting that was reactive, manual, and split between the business and the data team.

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Why you'd press play

A conversation about why dashboards go quiet, and how to bring them back into use.

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