TL;DR
Clients react emotionally to uncertainty, not metrics
Calm wording changes how performance feels
Weird internet rabbit hole: pilots are trained to sound calm during turbulence
Useful rewrite: “performance declined” vs “performance softened”
Interesting tool: a website showing how humans actually scan screens
Operator observation: dashboards rarely answer “are we okay?”
WEIRD INTERNET FIND 🌐
There’s a famous eye-tracking study showing most people scan webpages in an “F-pattern.”
Meaning:
they read the top
skim the left side
mentally give up halfway down
Which explains:
why giant dashboards overwhelm stakeholders
why nobody reads the 14-tab PDF
why your beautifully organised report still gets:
❝“Hey quick question…”
Humans don’t consume dashboards logically.
They scan for emotional signals:
red numbers
downward graphs
bold percentages
sudden change
OPERATOR OBSERVATION 👀
A lot of stakeholders don’t actually want:
more metrics
more screenshots
more exported charts
They want:
reassurance
interpretation
confidence
context
The dashboard is usually just the receipt.
BEFORE vs AFTER ✍️
Before
“CTR decreased 23% after budget increases across prospecting campaigns.”
Technically correct.
Emotionally?
This sounds like:
something broke
somebody messed up
we should panic
After
“Performance softened slightly after scaling spend into broader audiences. We exhausted the cheapest attention first, which is normal during expansion. Next step is refreshing creatives before scaling further.”
Same account.
Same data.
Completely different emotional outcome.
One sounds:
- reactive
The other sounds:
- understood
RANDOM INTERNET RABBIT HOLE 🕳️
Pilots are trained to sound calm during turbulence.
Not because turbulence is harmless.
Because panic spreads faster than information.
Reporting works the same way.
The wording changes how people interpret uncertainty.
Interesting side note: Weather apps do this too.
Compare:
“heavy rain”
vs“passing showers”
Same weather.
Different emotional reaction.
USEFUL THING ⚡
Before sending any stakeholder update, ask yourself:
“Does this sentence reduce uncertainty… or increase it?”
Tiny wording changes massively affect how performance feels.
Especially during bad weeks.
STRANGE BUT TRUE
Most dashboards answer:
What changed?
Very few answer:
Are we okay?
That second question is usually the real meeting.
COOL WEBSITE OF THE WEEK 🔍
A huge rabbit hole of:
data visualisation
information design
weird charts
visual storytelling
internet-era communication design
You’ll instantly start noticing:
which visuals create clarity
which visuals create panic
and why most dashboards accidentally do both