I have a copy of Tufte's "Beautiful Evidence" at work. It's a survey of different methods of conveying information, with pros and cons. I occasionally just page

I have a copy of Tufte's "Beautiful Evidence" at work. It's a survey of different methods of conveying information, with pros and cons. I occasionally just page through it while contemplating some UI widget or another, and actually wrote a rather nice CLI tool for displaying some sensor data (histograms, auto-ranged, FTW!) based on some of his ideas. The book not only goes back through various historical treatises like the rise and fall of Napoleon, but also discusses newer ideas like "sparklines," and even addresses why bullet points and font sizes contributed to the space shuttle Columbia disaster. It's definitely worth checking out Tufte's site [1], if you're into this sort of thing. He's even got a series of small treatments on completely random topics in the "Notebooks" section. [1] https://www.edwardtufte.com/ https://www.edwardtufte.com/