Practical Tableau

Chapter 54. Five Design Tips for Enhancing Your Tableau Visualizations

Accurate and honest data is the core of every great data visualization. If you are able to leverage data visualization best practices to make that data easy to understand and act on, you are a huge step ahead of the game. Undoubtedly, you can’t have a quality data visualization without quality data and fundamental best practices. That being said, without balancing the quality of your data with a quality design, your data visualization will never reach its full potential. Before dismissing design as an unnecessary—or worse, undoable—component of your data visualization, ask yourself why you visualize data. My answer is to find and communicate actionable insights. To make insights actionable, or provoke change, your data visualization needs to be seen by the most relevant and/or largest audience possible. Design is the key to reaching that audience.

I often talk about the concept of being remarkable, my favorite Seth Godin principle. Being remarkable means that your work is so high quality, distinctive, or compelling in some way that it moves your audience to remark about it. In today’s world, that may mean sharing your work on social media. What it may also mean to you in the corporate world is that your work gets passed up the ladder—creating change, recognition, promotions … fame … and fortune! The latter may be a longshot, but it’s worth a try.

To help illustrate how big of a difference design can make to ...