Dashboard — Our approach
The dashboard is not a scoreboard. It is a radar.
The problem
When life is managed across multiple domains — work, finances, health, learning, relationships — no single domain can be evaluated in isolation. A good day at work can coexist with a neglected budget. A consistent workout streak can coexist with poor nutrition.
The challenge is situational awareness: knowing, at a glance, where things stand across all the areas that matter. Without this awareness, attention flows to whatever is loudest — the most recent notification, the most anxious thought, the most urgent email. What is quiet but important goes unseen.
The dashboard exists to fix this asymmetry.
What the science says
Information dashboard design
Few (2006, 2013) established the principles of effective dashboard design:
- Purpose: The dashboard must answer a specific set of questions
- Visual perception: Information should be processed pre-attentively — the user should see the state before they read the labels
- Relevance: Every element must earn its place
Oter’s dashboard applies these principles by answering one question: “How is each domain of my life doing right now?” The answer is delivered through colour-coded status indicators that signal good/medium/bad before the user reads a single number.
Cognitive switching costs
Monsell (2003) showed that switching between mental contexts imposes a cognitive cost. When the user has to open six different screens — tasks, habits, finance, nutrition, workout, study — to assess their overall state, they pay that switching cost six times.
The dashboard eliminates these switches. One screen shows all domains. The user’s attention can stay on the assessment rather than on the navigation.
Situational awareness
Endsley (1995) defined situational awareness in three levels:
- Perception — noticing the relevant elements in the environment
- Comprehension — understanding what those elements mean
- Projection — knowing what is likely to happen next
A good dashboard supports all three. Oter’s dashboard supports perception (the visual domain statuses), comprehension (the summaries and details), and projection (the “next task” and “next habit” cards).
Signal detection for status
The dashboard uses three levels — good, medium, bad — for each domain’s status. This coarse categorisation is deliberate. It mirrors signal detection theory (Green & Swets, 1966): the task is to distinguish actionable from non-actionable states, not to measure precise values.
A three-level scale is enough to drive action. If a domain is good, no action needed. If medium, monitor. If bad, investigate. Finer granularity would create analysis without improving decisions.
Heuristic decision-making
Gigerenzer (2007) showed that simple heuristics — rules of thumb — often outperform complex analysis in real-world decisions. The dashboard’s “good/medium/bad” indicator is a heuristic. It doesn’t tell you the exact count of overdue tasks or the precise budget variance. It tells you whether to pay attention.
How Oter applies it
Aggregated view of all domains
The dashboard is the first screen the user sees. It aggregates every active feature — tasks, habits, finance, nutrition, workout, journal, books, projects — into a single view. This directly addresses the cognitive switching cost.
Domain-level status indicators
Each domain shows a simplified status: good (green), medium (amber), or bad (red). The status is computed by the server based on domain-specific criteria — overdue tasks, budget health, workout completion, etc. The user doesn’t need to know the algorithm. They just need to know where to direct their attention.
Priority carousel
At the top of the dashboard, a priority carousel surfaces the single most important action across all domains — the task due soonest, the habit about to be missed, the bill about to be due. This reduces the “what should I focus on?” decision to a single choice.
Platform-specific layout
The dashboard adapts its layout to the platform — more space for domain cards on desktop, a streamlined view on mobile. In both cases, the core information (what needs attention?) is the first thing the user sees.
Feature flag integration
Domains that the user has disabled are not shown on the dashboard. This respects the balance principle: showing an empty domain creates noise. Showing only active domains keeps the radar clean.
Practical tips
- Use the dashboard as your starting point. Every time you open Oter, look at the dashboard first. The one thing in the priority carousel is what needs your attention.
- Check domains with medium status. “Good” needs nothing. “Bad” is obvious. “Medium” is where things can drift without notice. A weekly check of medium-status domains prevents them from becoming bad.
- Customise your visible features. The sidebar lets you toggle which features are visible. Fewer visible features means a cleaner dashboard and less noise.
- Don’t obsess over “bad” status. A bad status on the dashboard is information, not a verdict. It means a domain needs attention. That’s useful to know.
References
Endsley, M. R. (1995). Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors, 37(1), 32–64.
Few, S. (2006). Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data. O’Reilly Media.
Few, S. (2013). Information Dashboard Design: Displaying Data for At-a-Glance Monitoring (2nd ed.). Analytics Press.
Gigerenzer, G. (2007). Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious. Penguin Press.
Green, D. M., & Swets, J. A. (1966). Signal Detection Theory and Psychophysics. Wiley.
Monsell, S. (2003). Task switching. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 134–140.