Dashboards That Deliver: A Conversation with Amanda Makulec

In this episode, I talk with Amanda Makulec about what it really takes to design dashboards and data products that people can understand and use. We dig into why so many dashboards fail, how designers and analysts often misjudge their audiences, and what it means to take a truly human-centered approach to data visualization. Amanda shares insights from her work leading the Data Visualization Society and from her book, including practical ways to think about context, cognition, and decision-making. We also discuss common misconceptions about dashboards, stakeholder expectations, and the gap between technical correctness and real-world usefulness. This conversation is packed with ideas for anyone building data tools meant to inform decisions, not just look impressive.

You can listen to Dashboards That Deliver: A Conversation with Amanda Makulec online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Dashboards That Deliver: A Conversation with Amanda Makulec is an episode from The PolicyViz Podcast by The PolicyViz Podcast.

This episode is 42:34 long.

This episode was published on Feb 18, 2026.

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