Stephen Few

Stephen Few’s approach is monitoring grounded in visual perception: standard chart types, one screen, and emphasis reserved for what needs attention. Books: Show Me the Numbers (2004), Information Dashboard Design (2006) and Now You See It (2009).

Use it for operational dashboards, status pages and scorecards read at a glance. For other pages, see Choose an expert.

Illustrative example with synthetic data. A compact monitoring view uses color only for an exception.

Fit the judgement on one screen

• Use a KPI-led layout and keep the page within its non-scrolling tier; calculate the threshold as in Tokens and thresholds.
• Move detail that the judgement does not need to a detail page.
• Do not put anything the judgement needs behind a tab, popover or hover. Tabs can hold further views; the first view answers the page’s question on its own.

Highlight exceptions only

Mute everything else so that colour, weight and position mark only the values that need attention.

Check	Operation
Context in one muted colour	setColoringType single with setColoringColor
The measure that matters in a highlight colour	setMeasureGraphColor (bar, line)
The line that matters drawn thicker	setMeasureLineSize (line)
Table cells flagged against thresholds	setColumnRepresentation indicator, then addColumnIndicatorSegment, setColumnIndicatorSegmentValue and setColumnIndicatorSegmentColor (table)
A KPI’s change beside its value	A measure added with role number-comparison; see KPI card
Rank carried by position	setSortingEnabled, setSortingDirection (bar)

Give every delta a sign or arrow as well as a colour; see Deltas and indicators.

Show a measure against its target

• gauge with one dimension takes a second measure as the target; setGaugeBarMode true draws bars instead of arcs.
• A table column with setColumnRepresentation progress and setColumnProgressTargetValue shows each row against one target.

No type draws a bullet graph; see App limitations.

Chart choices

Prefer	For
Sorted bar, horizontal when labels are long	Comparing and ranking categories
line	Change over time
table with indicator columns	Precise values, many measures per item
number with a comparison	A KPI and its change
scatter	Two measures against each other

Avoid	Because
Radial gauge and distribution-gauge	Large area for one value; hard to compare
pie and radar	Angles and radial axes compare less accurately than lengths on one axis
sankey and word-cloud	Slower to read than a bar or table of the same values

Pairs with KPI-led, table-first and card grid layouts, and the storytelling with data and Economist styles. Avoid scrolling layouts such as long-form.

Not available

Bullet graphs and a colour for one named category are not available; see App limitations. Use fixed axis ranges when charts need the same scale.