The Dashboard: Designing a "Home" for 30 Tools
How do you design a home page when your product is 30 different tools? The answer took five redesigns to find.
The dashboard has been redesigned five times. Each version taught me something the previous one couldn't.
Version 1 was a simple grid of tool cards. Clean, but impersonal. It didn't know who you were or what you cared about. Every user saw the same thing.
Version 2 added personalization — recently used tools at the top. Better. But it still felt like a list, not a home.
Version 3 got too ambitious. I added analytics widgets, a calendar, file history, weather (yes, weather). It was overwhelming. Users called it "cluttered" in feedback. They were right.
Version 4 stripped everything back. Just the essentials: greeting, recent activity, quick actions. Clean, but now it felt empty. Users asked "is this all there is?"
Version 5 — the current one — found the balance. A personalized hero section with time-aware greeting. Quick access to your most-used tools. Stats that matter to you. A weather widget that's useful without being distracting. The AI assistant tucked in the corner, available but not intrusive.
Design is iteration. There will be a version 6. I'm already thinking about it.