ENFR

Learn dashboard design with me

Most dashboards show numbers and leave the reader to work out what they mean. The people who solved that problem were drawing railway timetables, mountain maps, control panels and trade accounts long before there were screens.

This guide puts their answers to work. It starts with who they were, turns what they found into twelve rules, each with a model you can change, and ends with the dashboards we built that way. It reads as one page: keep scrolling and each chapter follows the last.

The people behind the rules

The people the rules cite, in the order of their work
Meet all 54 in chapter 1 →

One dashboard, twelve rules

Point at a rule to find it on the page

A small dashboard for an imaginary business, built with every rule in this guide. Each region answers one question and sits on the same twelve-column grid. Point at a rule to see where it works on the page, or at a region to see which rules it uses. The chapters then open the rules one at a time.

One dashboard, twelve rules. The weekly review of an imaginary online shop, with illustrative numbers. Each region applies one or more of the twelve rules, and the keys above it name them.

Contents

Keep scrolling to read them in order, or open any one
  1. 1

    The people

    Who worked out how to draw numbers that people act on, what each of them made, what they brought to the craft, and what to take from them.

    Inside54 people in six fields, on one time axis
  2. 2

    Frame and measure

    A grid that divides many ways, an instrument for every number, and a test for when a change is real.

    InsideRules 1, 2 and 3
  3. 3

    Marks and surfaces

    Draw the arithmetic as a shape, shade for hierarchy and print the quantity, and give each fill one job.

    InsideRules 4, 5 and 6
  4. 4

    Reading order

    One axis shared down the page, tables set to be read, and type chosen for figures.

    InsideRules 7, 8 and 9
  5. 5

    Candour and control

    Uncertainty shown only when it is earned, each control placed on its consequence, and plain words for every number.

    InsideRules 10, 11 and 12
  6. 6

    What neighbouring fields know

    Forecasting, business notation, retail planning, tables, perception, control rooms, research on dashboards and type, each read for what it found.

    InsideEight fields, with charts drawn from published results
  7. 7

    Dashboards we made

    Our dashboards opened up: the question each one answers, who reads it, and the rules that carry it.

    Inside7 dashboards, 40 annotations
  8. 8

    Works to open

    Books, papers, interfaces and working tools that are worth studying whole.

    InsideOn paper, on screen and in working tools
  9. 9

    The system

    The grid, tokens and type the guide is built from, a model to tune them, and every source and credit.

    InsideTokens to copy, sources, photo credits