gtmjosh | Design for the Person Using the Report

Design for the Person Using the Report

One audience, decomposed composites, and the anecdote doing its own job.

A report for the person who owns the process and a report for the person who funds it are different artifacts. The first needs segments, drill-through, and the stall reasons. The second needs the outcome, the trend, and one sentence about what is being done.

Serving both in one surface produces the twelve-chart dashboard from Chapter 1. Pick one, and build the second separately if it is genuinely needed.

Decompose the composite

If a report carries a composite score, show its components or expect it to be misread.

A real composite has a structure where one half is floored at zero before another half is added. The consequence is that a badly performing record can score exactly the second half and nothing else, and that value looks like partial health while actually meaning “no momentum at all, plus some recent contact”. A reader who cannot see the components has no way to know that a middling score means something categorically different from a middling score elsewhere in the range.

A composite whose components are invisible will be misread, and the misreading is not random.

The anecdote and the base rate

A real deck presents one named example in detail, then immediately follows it with the pattern across a large multi-year population.

That is exactly right, and the order matters. The story makes the finding concrete and memorable. The base rate establishes that it is a pattern rather than a story. Neither does the other's job, and a brief with only the anecdote is persuasion while a brief with only the base rate is usually ignored.

Use both. Label which is which.

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Design for one person

The composite above is about to be misread by somebody reasonable. Decide what this reader needs, and stop the misreading.

Fixture: composite-misread

A middling score that means something else

FIXTURE-COMPOSITE-MISREAD

Structure: One half floored at zero, then another half added
A middling score therefore: Can be entirely the second half
What it looks like: Partial health
What it means: No momentum at all, plus recent contact
Visible to the reader: Only if the components are shown

Your reader owns the outcome and can reassign people. What do they need?

The outcome, the segments, where it stopped, and a path into the records.
Enough to find the specific thing to change. Build the funder’s version separately if it is genuinely needed.The outcome, the trend, and one sentence on what is being done.
Concise, decision-ready, and exactly what gets asked for in a leadership review.Everything both readers need, in one brief with clear sections.
One artifact to maintain, and nobody has to ask where their part went.

How do you present the composite?

With its components shown, plus a note on how its structure can mislead.
Because one half is floored before the other is added, a middling score can be entirely the second half. A reader who cannot see the components has no way to know that.The score alone. That is what it is for.
One number is scannable, comparable, and is why a composite was built in the first place.The score with a note explaining its range and bands.
Tells the reader how to interpret where a value sits without cluttering the view with components.

Chapter 8 of 90 complete