Dashboard Color Best Practices: Make It Mean Something, Not Just Look Nice
On a dashboard, color is data, not decoration. Here is how to use it so a glance carries meaning: a…
Read the note →Cities collect a staggering amount of data and then guard it like a dragon sitting on a hoard it will never spend. We pry it loose, scrub it clean, and turn it into charts a person can read before the coffee goes cold.
Open data is not a policy abstraction filed under Someday. It is a chart, a route, a number you can act on this afternoon. We find it, build with it, and show our work, footnotes and embarrassing dead ends included.
Every city sits on a mountain of spreadsheets nobody was ever meant to see. We find the useful ones, translate them out of fluent Bureaucrat, and hand them back in a shape you can actually use.
A transit feed is just a rumor until somebody draws it. We turn raw data into maps, charts, and live metrics that answer the one question anyone really has, which is whether the bus is coming or not.
Numbers do not explain themselves. They sit there looking official and hoping you will not ask questions. We ask the questions, including the rude one about who got left out of the dataset entirely.
Codefests, demos, and the occasional heated argument about how to format a date. We write down what we tried, what broke, and which dataset turned out to be quietly lying the whole time.
The bus does not care about your feelings. It has a schedule, a location, and an opinion, and all three sit in a public database that almost nobody bothers to open. Reading it is the entire job.
The deep end of what we do, written up so you can copy it. Begin with the pillar, then follow whichever thread you need.
The full method, from choosing the one number that matters to laying it out so a glance carries meaning.
Where to start when you would rather adapt a working file than build a grid from scratch.
The six-tile leadership view, and the discipline of leaving almost everything off it.
Real report layouts worth borrowing, and the design tips that keep them readable.
On a dashboard, color is data, not decoration. Here is how to use it so a glance carries meaning: a…
Read the note →A real-time dashboard sounds impressive and often is not needed. Here is how to tell when live data earns its…
Read the note →An operational dashboard is the one people actually work from, not the one leadership glances at. Here is what it…
Read the note →