What the prompt produced

The same data, asked for two different ways

A dashboard nobody opens twice is a wasted ask. These two pages contain identical numbers — the only difference is what the prompt asked for.

The prompt

“Headline number at the top, five tiles max, Melinda Maria brand colours, red only for things that need action, last-updated stamp in the corner, readable on a phone.”

⚠️This is a static example. Every figure on it is real Melinda Maria data, pulled from our own connectors on 1 September 2026 — but this page is a snapshot and will not change. The real thing re-pulls its numbers every time you open it.

the same question, two prompts

✗ What you get if you just ask

August revenue was $4,532,936 from 26,449 orders. July revenue was $3,664,839 from 24,048 orders. June revenue was $2,280,668 from 13,707 orders. Wholesale billed $320,510 in August across 507 invoices with $248,085 in payments received and $1,837 in credit memos, leaving an open balance of $75,727. July wholesale billed $296,912 across 407 invoices. Creator marketing generated $274,042 in revenue on $27,405 of commission for a return of 10× across 347 active creators with an average order value of $127.17, of which 844 were new customers and 1,308 were returning…

Everything is here. Nobody will read it.

✓ What you get if you ask properly

August

updated 1 September 2026

$4,532,936

revenue +24% on July

26,449

orders

10×

creator ROAS

$320,510

wholesale billed

$75,727

open balance

One headline. Four supporting numbers. Red only where it matters.

The five things to ask for

Ask for this	Because
One headline number	If everything is big, nothing is. Decide what the page is actually about.
Five or six tiles, no more	Past that, people stop reading and start scrolling.
Brand colours	Say “Melinda Maria brand colours” and Claude uses lavender, plum and hot pink without being told the hex codes.
Red only for exceptions	Colour is a signal. Spend it on the one number somebody needs to act on.
A last-updated stamp	The first question anyone asks about a dashboard is “is this current?”

You do not need design vocabulary for this. Saying “make it look like something I would show the leadership team” gets you most of the way. The list above just makes it repeatable.

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