Jones - Communicating data with Tableau : [designing, developing, and delivering data visualizations; covers Tableau version 8.1]

There is a huge opportunity to find and share the insights contained in data. This is not a new development. People from Florence Nightingale to William Playfair to Dr. John Snow and countless others have been changing the world with data for centuries.

The challenges we face today are different, and so are the tools at our disposal. But just as back then, the person who would perfect the art of communicating data in our time must be at once analytical, articulate, and creative. That is to say: the result, when done well, often involves a combination of numbers, words, and images.

More than anything, however, empathy is required. The person doing the communicating must understand the members of the audience: what will make sense to them, what motivates them, and what concerns them. The inherent challenge and the resulting satisfaction of making a meaningful impact with data are what draw me to this endeavor more than anything else.

Tableau Software has developed and created a visualization querying engine and user interface that make it easy to discover and communicate with data. Once you get the hang of it, it can be a real pleasure to use. Tableau makes it possible to quickly view data from a number of different angles, to combine it with additional data sets and conduct a more sophisticated analysis, and to craft a message that will really hit home.

But to fully unlock the power of Tableau, the communicator of data needs to appreciate what will work well in each particular situation. The software is designed to steer the user down the straight and narrow pathway of best practices, but it is up to the user to know when to adhere to rules of thumb, and when to break them. Also, there are many options to choose from, and many decisions to make when crafting a message. Its important to understand the range of alternatives, how to use each one well, and which to employ.

In my current role as Tableau Public Product Manager at Tableau, I have the privilege of interacting with a host of talented individuals who are setting data free from the confines of spreadsheets and tables and making it easy to see what the data shows about our world. On my own blog, I have been attempting to do the same thing for the past three years, and after dozens of projects and experiments, I have learned a number of techniques that work well, and some that dont work so well.

In this book, I have attempted to provide advice to the would-be communicators of data, to guide them in the proper usage of Tableau to achieve the desired effect. My hope is that this book will help others learn what I have learned, and avoid the mistakes I wasnt wise enough to dodge the first time around.