Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful book with plenty of design insight (and examples)...
Comment: One of the system architecture ideas that has waxed and waned over the years is the concept of an Information Dashboard... a single screen of data that summarizes key data points for quick monitoring by executives. But just throwing a few graphs on the web page isn't necessarily the right thing to do. Stephen Few covers the subject of dashboard design in his book Information Dashboard Design : The Effective Visual Communication of Data.
Contents: Clarifying the Vision; Variations in Dashboard Uses and Data; Thirteen Common Mistakes in Dashboard Design; Tapping Into the Power of Visual Perception; Eloquence Through Simplicity; Effective Dashboard Display Media; Designing Dashboards for Usability; Putting it All Together; Appendix; Index
For someone like me (not a whiz when it comes to graphic design) to really like a book of this nature is saying something. I actually understood everything he was writing, and I didn't think this was some self-serving "listen to me because I'm an expert" volume. The book is printed on heavy paper stock and full color, so the examples don't lose any impact in the normal translation to black and white. Lavishly illustrated with examples both good and bad, it's easy to see why some things work and some don't. Even designs that I thought "looked" professional had significant drawbacks. For instance, colors should represent the same thing throughout the page. Don't make a pie chart with a red slice if you want red to represent a danger indicator somewhere else on the screen. Minimize the non-data pixels so the eyes don't have to work at interpreting data from "fluff" (like graph lines). And when you're choosing graphing formats, make sure you choose ones which are relevant to the data being displayed. Don't choose a pie chart when a bar graph makes an easier comparison. He even goes into color choices and how they cause the mind and eye to group things on the page. Normally I'd be reading material like this with a "says you!" attitude, but there wasn't a single instance where I thought he was pushing his own preferences instead of something that actually made sense and had some research behind it. I actually found myself thinking about some of my own application designs based on the material presented, as well as how I need to change a few things along the way.
If you're not a graphically oriented person (like I'm not), this book is a lifesaver for your design and development efforts. It should remain close at hand as you do your web site design on a daily basis. And even if you *do* know what you're doing, you will likely become a whole lot better at it after reading Information Dashboard Design.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good Theory
Comment: One of my project managers lent this to me at work when we talked about dashboard development. I am a .net developer with a background in SQL Server.
The author has some great points about the unnecessary fluff in dashboard graphing. For instance, focusing attention on 3d aspects as well as shading brings no value to the graph. But who doesn't already know this? He states things that are important or matter should come first on a dashboard and should be noticeable, again who doesn't know this?
His examples were well drawn? Or where they developed in a language such as Dundas graphs with .net technologies? We won't know because there is absolutely no source code. So if you are looking for a book that has examples with code, you wont find it here. What you will find here is good practices and how to keep your dashboard clean.
I would of given the book a 3.5 stars but you cant, so I was being a bit nice. The author is knowledgeable but most of it is knowledge that most designers already know.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Have some good ideas, but could be shorter with no loss of content.
Comment: After reading this book I have the following positive points to make:
.. It is very well designed, it is nice to look at it.
.. Has some good ideas (but they are not original ones).
.. In general, following its advice you will be able to do a better design of dashboards and management information systems screens.
If I counted only this I would give it 5 stars, but, I think this book has some negative points. One of the points makes the author inconsistent with his own recommendations throughout the book.
The book is about designing dashboards and the major line of thought is:
- keep it simple, clean and objective.
- Use the tools (graphics and tables) in a rational way.
- don't use all the fancy features that software vendors put in their products for they will make your dashboard less effective.
But the author when writing it, forgot part of his own teachings and produced a text that is very prolixic, too many words to explain simple concepts and ideas. Lacks objectivity.
So, if you want to better understand the use of graphs, take a look at Naomi Robbins, "Creating More Effective Graphs". This book is very objective, simple and fast to read.
The second flaw is that in the examples to show how to do a well designed dashboard, the author used two types of graphs that are not available in today's softwares. One type of graph was created by the author while writing this book (bullet graphs) and the other (sparkline) is the creation of Mr.Tufte, which will appear in a future book of his. It would be more useful to see examples with the typical tools available to design a dashboard.
So, be prepared for a nice experience with pictures and graphs in a sea of words. It is an excellent book that will help design dashboards and the like. (So far is the best book on this topic).
Customer Rating:
Summary: Practical advice that works
Comment: I suppose that comparisons to Tufte's work are unavoidable, for he is the best known expert in visual information display and his work is undeniably elegant, but "Information Dashboard Display" is an entirely different type of book. While Tufte and Few would probably agree on most points in a discussion of information visualization, Tufte's focus is wide-ranging and conceptual, while Few focuses on the practical needs of business, and in this book specifically on dashboard design.
Few pulls together relevant advice from a vast body of research, organizes it, and makes it digestible for people like me who must display large amounts of data in the limited space of a single computer screen in a way that clearly and efficiently communicates. No one else has done this. He exposes the common problems in visual dashboard design and step by step leads the reader through practical instruction in how to do it right. I have a job to do; this book has helped me do it, and do it well.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Pretty, Nice
Comment: 99.9% of the content is derived from Tufte, but Tufte covers more. I feel that the content was "padded" and it takes a long time to get to the beef, but its there. $ for $ Tufte is the better buy, but the Examples of Good and Bad dashboard implementation are clear and usefull, and the book is well produced and has a great feel to it. But note this is about graphical design not dashboard Content design. I agree with author when he states that it's a little presumptious of him to claim to have invented bullet graphs, but he is the first to get them into print and he presents a definition of their construction which is useful. The most important thing I learnt is that there is an upcoming as yet unpublished edition from Tufte due in 2006 from which he references. I await that eagerly.
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