--- name: visual-board-design-guide description: "What a visual board should show, how often, and who keeps it current — a worksheet specifying content and ownership, not a rendered board layout. Use when: A team is setting up a new physical or digital visual board and wants a real content spec before building it. An existing board has gone stale and you want to catch which zones have nobody actually keeping them current. You want specific update cadences for each zone, not a vague sense that the board 'should be kept up to date.' Not for: You want an actual visual layout mockup — this is a content and ownership spec, not a design render. The board would just duplicate a dashboard nobody looks at physically — question whether a board adds anything a dashboard doesn't." --- # Visual board design guide What a visual board should show, how often, and who keeps it current — a worksheet specifying content and ownership, not a rendered board layout. Family: Visual management · Format: .xlsx · Domain: core ## What it is A visual board only works if it's actually current. This guide specifies what each zone of a board should show and how often it should update — the design decisions, not a rendered layout of where things physically sit. Describe roughly what the board should show, and real zones get drafted — but who keeps each zone current is never guessed. ## When to use it Use it when: - A team is setting up a new physical or digital visual board and wants a real content spec before building it. - An existing board has gone stale and you want to catch which zones have nobody actually keeping them current. - You want specific update cadences for each zone, not a vague sense that the board 'should be kept up to date.' Not when: - You want an actual visual layout mockup — this is a content and ownership spec, not a design render. - The board would just duplicate a dashboard nobody looks at physically — question whether a board adds anything a dashboard doesn't. ## How to fill it in - **zones** — Drafted from what the board should show — assign a real owner to keep each zone current. - **narrative** — Drafted from the zones actually built. ## What good looks like The example below is the renewal-risk queue's own board, pulling together the KPI tree, escalation matrix, and ILUO matrix into what the team actually looks at daily. One zone is honestly left without an owner rather than padded with a placeholder name. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/visual-board-design-guide ## Common mistakes - **Specifying a zone with no real update cadence.** — A board that's supposed to update 'regularly' quietly goes stale — a real cadence is what actually gets checked against. - **Assigning a placeholder owner just to make every zone look covered.** — A fake owner is worse than an honestly unassigned zone — it hides exactly the gap that causes boards to go stale in practice. - **Designing a board with more zones than anyone will actually maintain.** — A handful of zones someone actually keeps current beats a comprehensive board nobody has time to update. ## What it connects to Upstream: - **Key performance indicator (KPI) tree** (`kpi-tree`) — A board's metric zone is often a direct summary of an existing KPI tree, not a fresh set of numbers. Downstream: - **Go-see protocol** (`go-see-protocol`) — A go-see walk checks the board against reality — the board's own design is what that walk verifies. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding which zones actually earn a place on the board versus adding noise - Deciding who's realistically able to keep a given zone current Analysis — AI helps: - Drafting specific zones with what they show and a real update cadence from a rough description - Drafting the narrative from the zones actually built Drudgery — automated: - Counting how many zones have an assigned owner - Identifying which zones are still unassigned - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Visual board design guide is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/visual-board-design-guide.