Book · ~250 pages
Information Dashboard Design: Displaying Data for At-a-Glance Monitoring
Stephen Few · Analytics Press / Amazon Paid Intermediate
This is the reference founders reach for when a dashboard has turned into a wall of numbers nobody reads. Few grounds every rule in how human perception actually works, so you learn why a sparkline or a bullet graph carries more meaning than a giant table, not just that it looks nicer. It is opinionated and example heavy, which is exactly what you want when you are cutting clutter and deciding what earns a spot on the screen.
- A dashboard should fit on one screen and answer the viewer's questions at a glance, so ruthless prioritizing beats cramming in every metric.
- Choose display forms (bullet graphs, sparklines, small bars) that use position and length, which the eye reads fastest, instead of decorative gauges and 3D charts.
- Most dashboard clutter comes from redundant labels, gridlines, and chartjunk: strip those first and the real signal surfaces on its own.
