Winners Announced for MicroCharts’ Dashboard Competition

BonaVista Systems (the maker of the Excel add-in product MicroCharts), a subsidiary of XL Cubed, has announced the winners of its 2008 Excel Dashboard Competition. You might be surprised to discover how effectively a dashboard can be designed using Excel, when enriched with MicroCharts, which adds sparklines and bullet graphs to Excel’s library of charts. These dashboards were not designed for show or to wow people with superficial eye candy–they were designed for actual use. The folks at BonaVista Systems have resisted the temptation to support the flashy (but ineffective) displays that the market has come to expect from dashboards. I applaud their courage and integrity. I’m betting that they don’t have a lot of customers coming back to them disappointed that their dashboards don’t work and don’t get used.

Take care,

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2 Comments on “Winners Announced for MicroCharts’ Dashboard Competition”


By JimUden. August 8th, 2008 at 6:13 am

Stephen,
Are you going to provide any commentary on these dashboards? I always enjoying reading your critiques and I learn a lot from your comments and suggestions.
Thanks,
Jim Uden

By Stephen Few. August 10th, 2008 at 11:33 am

Jim,

If I had the time, I would certainly add my comments to those that have been made by the folks at BonaVista Systems. Unfortunately, time is scarce as I’m struggling to complete my new book.