Customer Reviews
Easy to read. Sensible advice. - By: Neil Venn, 01 Sep 2008 
I'm about half-way through as I write this review but I am already very impressed with this book. Few has an easy-to-read style that's not full of fluff or pompous nonsense, & he provides sensible advise for producing effective designs.
The book begins by defining the term "information dashboard": the definition is suitably broad that you may realise that solutions you've build before would fitin & would therefore have benefited from the design advice givenin the book. To make his points about poor design, Few then uses a selection of examples found on the web. Many of these are eye catching & graphically pleasing - but the commentary makes you appreciate the problems each exhibits. In the middle of the book, Few describes accepted scientific theories about human vision, perception & cognition that we should take into accountin our designs - & these generally support the arguments that the example dashboards used earlierin the book were poor designsin one way or another. Laterin the book (and I have not read these chapters yet), Few provides practical advice that can be appliedin dashboard design. I am expecting these to be almost self-evident by the time I get there thanks to the Background Few has provided me with. But I am still looking forward to reading them nonetheless.
This book isin no way biased towards any display technology, user interface technology or programming technology & is therefore applicable whether you are producing a single-user desktop application, a multi-user, multi-screen information wall (as you've seenin pictures of the stock exchange) or even if you are producing printed reports. The advice given is about the design thought process rather than any particular notation so is applicable regardless of the software design methodology you may use.
I would recommend this book to anyone interestedin the topic & would say it's a "must-have" if you are practically involvedin the specification, analysis, design & even implementation of Information Dashboards.
Great insights - By: Renato Gomes Ferraz, 29 Mar 2008 This is an excellent book & will change the way you look at how data is presented. I have struggledin the past trying to understand reports presented to me because of their poor design. The author offers a good mix of theory & practical examples, giving examples of poorly designed reports, pointing out their deficiencies & suggesting a better way of doing it. Overall it is a quick to read book that provides valuable insight.
Well Written, Well Presented - By: J. J. Baker-bates, 04 Jan 2008 Stephen Few nods more than a little to Edward Tufte when it comes to approaches to visual & information design, & this book is both a highly informative & pleasant read for that. While not quitein the same league as one of Tufte's works, Information Dashboard Design is refreshingly devoid of waffle & mere personal opinion. The design principles he identifies are not hard to grasp, & the theory & rationale for them is very well argued & presented. Few's invention of the "bullet graph" also ensures his place alongside Tuftein the field of information design.
We can only hope that his ideas will now catch on, & that the awful drek that infests the vast majority of dashboard designs by even the largest of vendors will be swept away forever. If I never see another big shiny gauge again, it will be too soon.
Great book - a must for designing dashboards - By: Mr. Alexander Watt, 08 Oct 2007 I agree with the two other reviews that I read prior to posting. This is a great book that is well written. The example screen shots really show you the difference that can be made by using good design principles as suggested. If you are doing any dashboard design you need to read this book. Also what was really good was at the end there was just one page acknowledgeing other major authorsin the area & suggesting their texts as well. This was really useful as rather than wade through all the references it gave you a snapshot of who Mr. Few thought were the bestin his field. Brilliant. Can't recommend it enough.
Spins your whole understanding of dashboards and charting on its head - By: Mr. E. Spooner, 21 Aug 2007 If you're currently using pie charts or graphs with lots of colours, you need this book.
If you've developed (or are developing) a digital dashboard that shares at least a few design ideas with a real in-car dashboard, you need this book.
If your users first reaction to your dashboard is 'wow, that looks cool' you need this book.
In fact, just buy this book. Your reporting & dashboards will benefit. The author really knows his stuff.
