Dashboard stands on card layout which has 3 main principles.
- A card is identifiable as a single, contained unit.
- A card can stand alone, without relying on surrounding elements for context.
- A card cannot merge with another card, or divide into multiple cards.
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I'd like to add one rule from my own experiences - it will be bad idea to make one card bigger than the smallest device it will be used will be able to show without need of scrolling
Those principles are there and show up every time you trying to do something different. Think about the card as biggest meaningful unit. Do not create relations between them.
Most easily you can get nice layout by doing all your cards with same size. But don't take this as the limitation.
You shouldn't design the dashboard, you should design cards.
If you followed principles the layout takes care of placing cards to meaningful positions on any device. Your cards don't try to talk with each other (in graphical means) and everything is perfectly fine.
All this does not mean that you absolutely should not design the dashboard. But doing so, it will be targeted to chosen screen size.
