Dashboards, like any reductive representation of reality, are inherently limited. They highlight certain aspects while obscuring others, capturing specific data

Dashboards, like any reductive representation of reality, are inherently limited. They highlight certain aspects while obscuring others, capturing specific data points while ignoring others. This is similar to how a map simplifies a territory or an image represents, but is not, the actual object (like in Magritte's famous painting "The Treachery of Images"). The problem is that dashboards are static snapshots of a dynamic reality. They are built on past understanding, and as systems evolve, they can become outdated and misleading. This can happen in several ways, two common ones are: - Data drift: The underlying meaning of the data changes. For example, a bug might cause app crashes to be misreported, rendering crash-related metrics unreliable. - Blind spots: Dashboards can't capture what they're not designed to measure. If user needs shift, a dashboard focused on existing feature usage won't reveal those changes. This limitation isn't unique to dashboards. Any projection from a higher-dimensional space (reality) to a lower-dimensional representation (dashboard) will inevitably lose information. The problem is exacerbated when the representation doesn't adapt to the changing reality.