Information Dashboard Design: Effective Visual Communication of Data

This book is a superb summary of the latest thinking in dashboard design.You probably know a lot of it - that is the beauty of this book. It organises thoughts and experience into a practical 'how to' for dashboard design.This is the theoretical work of design and presentation, please don't buy thinking that it will tell you how to use excel or SAP. The whole point is to help you tell people what they need to know in a way they can clearly see it.If you are a consultant then buy the book. I read it in a day then got a contract to produce a board reporting pack for a company, they liked it so much they asked me to do the same for a subsidiary. The recommendations alone made me 100 times the cost of the book.but beware, you have to have a brain and you have to be prepared to work to change your behaviour. A book is only as good as the person reading it and if you expect to buy this and have it design and execute a report for you without you doing anything then you will be disappointed.

I bought this book as a helpful reference guide for myself and a team of performance analysts who were looking at modernising a reporting suite back in 2010 to a more user friendly and informative visual dashboard style, moving away from the mass production of data-sheets. I found the book to be a valuable tool for helping to imagine and to plan analytical, strategic, visual reports, which could help to drive business improvement.

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 authors in the area and 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 best in his field. Brilliant. Can't recommend it enough.

This is an excellent book and will change the way you look at how data is presented. I have struggled in the past trying to understand reports presented to me because of their poor design. The author offers a good mix of theory and practical examples, giving examples of poorly designed reports, pointing out their deficiencies and suggesting a better way of doing it. Overall it is a quick to read book that provides valuable insight.

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 and dashboards will benefit. The author really knows his stuff.

Great book for what I wanted

a lovely read with some plenty of visual examples. Anyone who is designing dashboards should spend some time digesting this material. Even if you disagree with Sephen's arguments, the fact that you consider them will make you better at designing dashboards and presenting information in general.

Excellent book which should be read by every manager of whatever discipline. Worth the price just to learn about Bullet Graphs!