Advanced visualizations

1. Advanced visualizations

Welcome to our last chapter, in which we will dive into the world of more advanced visualizations, infographics, dashboards, and stories.

2. The principles of an infographic

Before we start, let's take a moment to recognize what makes a good visualization or an infographic, looking at David McCandless' chart on the Twitter community. The three keywords that pop to my mind are well-designed, colorful, and useful. Like this one, good charts are easy to follow and are coherent in their design. The minimalistic approach of placing labels and values only where necessary enhances infographics' readability and draws immediate attention to the accentuated data points or chart elements. Color and scale are used appropriately and do not distract us from the core message but enhance it.

3. Meet our new charts

In this chapter, we will learn how to design and build a few impressive visualizations that require slightly more work but result in infographic-worthy charts. We will get to know the Waffle and DNA charts, Sparklines, and the famous Sankey Diagram. Let's zoom onto each one individually.

4. Waffle chart

The waffle chart gets the name and the fame from its looks. With a bit of imagination, it looks like a waffle. It typically is a square matrix of, for example, ten by ten and is excellent for visualizing part of the total. It is a good replacement for simple bar charts but also pie charts, especially those involving just two or three categorical values. With some work, it can be turned into a pictogram, similar to the Twitter visualization we have just seen.

5. DNA (dumbbell) chart

DNA chart, also known as a dumbbell or barbell chart, is a visually attractive choice for presenting ranges and measuring gaps between two measures. When equipped with good labeling of categorical values and X-axis synchronization, it is a great choice for any type of comparison chart but also distribution charts.

6. Sparklines

Sparklines, or in other words, tiny charts, often accompanying numeric tables, originate from Microsoft Excel and are a good choice when explaining high-level trends. Their minimalistic design, usually containing little to no labeling, draws attention to the highlighted data points, such as minimum or maximum. They aren't the best option when precision and reporting of exact values are at stake, but they make good companion charts, for example, in hover-over tooltips.

7. Sankey Diagram

A Sankey diagram is an advanced type of chart displaying the flow of the values between categorical dimensions. It consists of nodes, visible here as left and right wings, which are connected by links, constituting the core of the Sankey chart. These charts are suited for comparison and flow use cases, as they immediately draw attention to the largest contributors, the thickest links. However, they may pose challenges to interpret, especially when precision is required, and are relatively complex to make in Tableau, so we won't cover them in detail in this course.

8. Extra tips and tricks on advanced visualizations

How do you succeed in building such advanced visualizations? In order to draw complex charts, you will have to tap into various non-obvious features of Tableau. As we will see in the demo and the exercises, the auto-created Measure Names, and Measure Values objects will come in handy. The trick often lies in using dual axes and experimenting with various chart types. Beautiful visualizations often rely on chart combination either through overlaying or simply by building a dashboard with various charts assembled together into a coherent piece. Don't forget that it's often a good idea to stand on the shoulders of giants and consult widely available "chart recipes", in the form of downloadable workbooks or cookbooks. Head over to the link below for some examples.

9. Let's practice!

That’s it for now. Let’s test what you remember.

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