The New Fabulous Mapbox Studio Tutorial - Making a more Accessible Map

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The New Fabulous Mapbox Studio Tutorial - Making a more Accessible Map

Here is an example of how beautiful your new maps can be.  This one was designed to be a background map that was elegant and provided an alternate to just the black, white, and that other one that no one uses, that come pre-designed in Tableau.   Check it out live and zoom in and out.  Notice the color gradations as you zoom in close.  Those would have taken forever to get right in Classic, not to mention how amazingly smooth it is to zoom in and out and pan around.  This is a map Ferrari!

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Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy Mapbox Maps and Layers in Tableau 9.2

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Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy Mapbox Maps and Layers in Tableau 9.2

One of the features that I am most excited about in 9.2 is the ability to add Mapbox map layers from the UI in Tableau instead of having to deal with all the .tms hackery!  If you are a beta tester for 9.2 and are publishing to Tableau Public, this is already available to you to use!  Ready to check out how easy it is now?  I’m going to use my Skyfall themed map to show off how easy it is to add multiple layers, and then we will create a “bog normal view swapper” (a very technical term that Allan Walker seems to use a lot).This will allow the user to change the maps and layers in the background of your published workbook.

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Design Your Data Viz Like a Product Designer

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Design Your Data Viz Like a Product Designer

After presenting on “Using Design and Emotion to create a Viz with Impact” at TCC13, one of the most common feedback comments was, “I never realized how many iterations and how much time you put into your viz’s.”  Having studied Industrial Design, it seemed only natural to follow a “Product Design” process when creating data visualizations.  Isn’t a data viz a product that you hope people will “consume” because they find it of use and of value? People are bombarded all day long with emails, tweets, Facebook posts, etc.  Why should they spend the time to look at your data visualization?   Just like a product, your viz should be designed with a specific goal and context in mind, and should capture the consumer’s attention immediately and provide a value to them.

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SNAP back to reality

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SNAP back to reality

This viz was inspired by Ron Shaich, founder and CEO of Panera Bread, who participated in a seven-day SNAP Challenge - living on a food and beverage budget of $4.50 a day, the average benefits available to a beneficiary of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps). "I had no clue. My SNAP Challenge last week taught me that merely observing someone else's plight does not hold a candle to consciously altering your habits to better understand what it might be like to live someone else's life." The CNN article on his experience can be seen here . This viz invites to you take the "SNAP challenge" as well as provide some information on the SNAP program from 1986 - 2012.

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Using Design and Emotion to Create a Data Visualization with Impact

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Using Design and Emotion to Create a Data Visualization with Impact

This is the slideshow from my session at the Tableau 2013 Customer Conference.  This session will walk through the process of creating a data visualization based on product design principles and ideas, focusing on overall product goals and user context. A step by step walk through of the design process for two data products, "Twitter TV Set" and "Firework Injuries" will be used as examples to highlight the impact that design and emotion can add to a visualization.  

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Firework Injuries

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Firework Injuries

Using data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, this visualization highlights all the injuries due to fireworks that happen, highlighting the 4th of July holiday period.  Click on any category to filter on it, and explore what injuries occur across dates, genders, and age groups.  Males seem to be more likely to get injured overall, and their injuries are to their hands and fingers.  Females, are more prone to head and neck injuries.  Sadly, wee ones are almost 10% of injuries, mostly over the 4th of July week.  Hover over any category and you can drill through to the gory details of the injuries (even the naughty bits). Please be safe this 4th of July and enjoy fireworks responsibly.

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Tableau 2012 Iron Viz Championship - Tornado Alley

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Tableau 2012 Iron Viz Championship - Tornado Alley

This viz was created for the Tableau 2012 Iron Viz competition in San Diego at their customer conference.  It was created in 20 minutes, while onstage, using a provided data set.  The viz shows the region called "Tornado Alley" and compares the number of tornadoes and fatalities to other regions. It was the winning viz!

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Heatmap Checkout Abandonment Flow

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Heatmap Checkout Abandonment Flow

This viz displays a visual walkthrough of the checkout process for a fictitious retailer. Rather then display a table or funnel of the data, this layout uses images of the checkout flow as background maps, shows visually where the abandonments occur. This allows the added insight of examining the UI along with the data adding richer insight into the flow.

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Dynamic Report Templates

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Dynamic Report Templates

This presentation was created for the Tableau 2012 user conference Tips and Tricks session. It walks through how to create a dashboard "application" for users that may want to have a simplified way to create basic reports, dashboards or charts, such as for PowerPoint presentations. The output is highly formatted and presentation ready, shielding the user from having to do any formatting or branding. The concept uses the sample data from a fictitious coffee merchant. The user has the ability to select the report attribute being reported on, the metric uses to monitor performance, filter criteria and the output chart or dashboard display. Use the tabs to walk through the presentation as well as a step by step "how to". The concept is called the "Chart-o-Matic".

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