Basedash launch demo 2: Charts

The second launch-day demo was about which charts Basedash has, and why there aren't more of them. Most BI tools have every single chart: if there's a data visualization, they'll throw it in there. We took a different approach. We talked to a lot of people and looked at a lot of data representations, and I went on deep dives into charts, and what we realized is that the vast majority of data should be visualized in a limited number of ways (0:24). That doesn't cover every situation, but it does 80 or 90 percent of the time.

So we have a table (that's definitely a chart), a line for growth over time, bar and horizontal bar, numbers for a big metric or KPI, images for something like a logo, detail for an individual record, text for a description or Markdown, and pie to show proportions (0:33). Then there's activity, one we added. It's that GitHub-style breakdown, and at a glance it shows you way more than a pie or bar chart. It's a great one for us to use inside the app, for user activity and stuff like that (1:23).

When you make a chart you can pick a type yourself or let the AI pick it, and there's a ton of context behind the scenes to help it choose the right visualization (1:42). The idea is that it's less on you to decide how to represent something and more about the question you have. We want to be an opinionated tool (1:55).

So I asked for a comparison of Sketch and Figma users, which as a designer is a raging debate (well, not so much anymore), without saying pie chart, and it picked the visualization (2:10). Then I asked it to add Framer to the mix. That's a pretty generic prompt and I wasn't sure it would work, but it should, and it did: 52 people have Framer in their dock, 78 have Sketch, and 453, or 77% of people, have Figma (3:01).

You describe what you're looking for and it picks the chart. You can always override it, but it does all the hooking up and the fuzzy details of how to actually bind data to it for you (3:10). It followed what Basedash is, and next up was the SQL editor.

When I posted it on X I wrote:

Demo 2 - Charts

We're taking a different approach to adding charts to Basedash. It's not a kitchen sink—It's opinionated. Users don't want to have to pick their chart (well, some do) so we let the AI step in and pick it for you.

Also, we're being opinionated with the types of charts that exist in the first place. Most people just want a handful of visualizations, and we wanted to make sure that each and every one wasn't just a chart library default, but works with our system prompts, looks amazing, and has all of the details added.

Yes, we'll be adding more, but once we take the time and make sure they're all done just right.