Few if any recent trends in business information delivery have inspired as much enthusiasm as dashboards. When they work, they provide a powerful means to tame the beast of data overload. Despite their popularity, however, most dashboards live up to only a fraction of their potential. They fail, not because of poor technology—at least not primarily—but because of poor design. The more critical that information is to the well being of the business, the more grievous is the failure, because the remedy is so readily available. Stephen Few, author of Information Dashboard Design, describes the goals of "situation awareness" and explain how dashboards can be designed to monitor call center activity at this level.