FINDING DIRECTIONWhen everything demands attention, nothing provides direction.
Back in 2012, twice a week, I made the journey from Hartford to New York to work at the Salesforce offices on Sixth Avenue in Hudson Square. Before sunrise, I parked across the street from Hartford's Amtrak station and made my way to the platform. The train from Hartford ran on diesel and ended in New Haven, where I transferred to an electric train. Two and a half hours later, I arrived at Penn Station and made my way underground to catch either the C or the E to Spring Street.
Stepping onto the platform, the hot, heavy air punches me in the face. I know it’s coming, but it hits me the same way every time. It carries the smell of old train grease, urine along the walls, and sweat from people passing through all day. The smell of food drifts down the stairs from the vendors above. Each one is recognizable for a moment before they combine into something particular to the subway: warm, stale, mechanical, and human. They press together and demand to be noticed all at once.
Sound pressed in from every direction. Trains scraped against the rails somewhere beyond the platform. Brakes screamed as they approached. Announcements broke apart through old speakers, loud enough to interrupt but rarely clear enough to understand. Conversations overlapped with footsteps, music, and the movement of hundreds of people trying to get somewhere.
When my train arrived, the doors opened onto an already crowded car. I stepped inside, found enough room to stand, and reached for a pole. One sudden stop or hard turn could send me stumbling into the person beside me. Many hands shared the same pole or rail. Finding a place to hold was almost as difficult as finding a place to stand.
Once I had my footing, I had another problem.
Where to look.
Nowhere Comfortable
Eye contact felt intrusive when we were standing only a few feet, or sometimes inches, apart. I avoided it, aware of everyone around me while trying not to appear as though I was watching anyone. Backpacks pressed against me on one side. Someone's hair brushed my face. I could hear music escaping from headphones turned a little too loud.
Below me, shoes crowded the small patches of dirty vinyl still visible between them. Above the windows, advertisements ran the length of the car. Every panel had been designed to catch my eye. Sometimes an entire car carried the same campaign from one ad space to the next. Graffiti had been scratched into the windows, while marker tags covered the frames and advertisements. None of it was something I wanted to see.
Across the car, a subway map gave my eyes somewhere neutral to rest. I already understood it but followed the colored lines anyway, tracing routes I was not taking. The window offered little relief. Most of the time, a dark tunnel wall rushed past only a few feet away. Lights flashed through the car as we passed another platform. A tiled station appeared for a few seconds and disappeared before I could fully take it in. Sometimes the dark glass returned a reflection of the car. I found myself watching the same people I was trying not to look at, only indirectly. Sometimes they were looking back.
My phone gave me another place to direct my eyes, but not much else. Underground wireless was still limited to a handful of pilot stations in 2012. Any connection I found at a platform disappeared when the train began moving. I could revisit something already loaded, move between screens that had nothing new to show me, or stare at the phone as though I had somewhere else to be. It was less a source of information than a socially acceptable place to look.
Around me, I noticed other passengers finding their own places to retreat. Some read. Some closed their eyes. Some wore large headphones that separated them from at least part of the experience. The headphones could block the conversations, music, and screeching wheels. They could not block the movement, the smells, or the awareness of another person standing inches away. Hands nearly touched as we shared the same rail, and the heat of so many bodies filled the small space between us.
Inside the car, the noise intensified. People talked, sang, yelled, preached, and asked for money. Performers entered with loud boomboxes and used the poles I was holding for balance as part of their routine. A train rushing in the opposite direction produced a sudden wall of sound. The wheels shrieked when we rounded a corner. Beneath it all was the constant rhythm of wheels crossing each section of track: thunk thunk, thunk thunk.
Each sense had its own version of the crowd. There was no neutral sound, smell, surface, or place to rest my eyes. The car was filled with things demanding my attention, but nothing told me where my attention belonged. I had plenty to look at and nowhere obvious to look.
Above Ground
When the train reached Spring Street, I stepped onto the platform and followed the crowd toward the stairs. As I climbed, the environment began to release its grip. The mechanical noise receded. The crowd spread out. The smells changed. At the top of the stairs, I stepped outside into Hudson Square.
Outside, the air felt clearer. Space opened between me and the people around me. For the first time since leaving Hartford in the dark, I could look farther than the other side of a subway car and see the sky.
I knew where I was. I knew where I was going. That transition comes back to me when I encounter a crowded interface. The subway had surrounded me with information but provided no direction for my attention. Above ground, the streets, buildings, and sky gave the complexity an order. I had enough space and context to understand my place within it.
Good interfaces provide that same sense of orientation.
Something to Hold Onto
That experience influences nearly everything I make. Before deciding on colors, controls, metrics, or features, I try to answer one question:
Where should you look first?
From there, I decide what provides context, what supports the next decision, and what can remain available without demanding attention now. The goal is to give complexity an order.
In artwork, composition determines where your eye enters and how it moves. Contrast can pull something forward. Negative space can give it room. If every shape, color, and mark demands equal attention, the work becomes difficult to read. There may be plenty to see, but no clear way into it.
Applications create the same problem through buttons, menus, messages, and features. Every addition may be useful on its own. Placed together without hierarchy, they begin competing. You stop thinking about what you came to accomplish and start thinking about how the application works. The best interfaces rarely announce themselves. They help you understand where you are, what matters, and what to do next. When everything works, you stop noticing the interface and focus on the reason you opened the application.
Analytics dashboards make this responsibility even more important. Every number arrives with the appearance of authority. Put enough of them together and the screen can look comprehensive while communicating very little. Displaying a number does not make it important. Context gives a change meaning. A highlighted metric can be easy to see and still point you in the wrong direction.
Building a dashboard begins with deciding what deserves to be measured. I want to reveal what changed, why it may matter, and whether it requires attention. The rest should remain available when you need to investigate, without competing with the thing you need to understand now.
Those decisions become visible in the interface. They determine what comes forward, what recedes, and how much of the larger picture remains within reach. If I get that hierarchy right, you should not have to think about it. You should have a clear place to begin, enough context to trust what you see, and an obvious way to continue.
If I get it wrong, I have recreated the subway car: everything is visible, everything is competing, and you are left searching for somewhere comfortable to look. I begin with what deserves attention. Capacity comes later.
Whatever I make, I want to give you a place to look, something to hold onto, and enough context to know where you are going.