Best of Tableau Web: September 2021

If you’ve ever had a conversation with me about data visualization, you know I’m passionate about color usage. If used incorrectly, preattentive attributes can be as much a blessing as a curse. There’s the issue of overwhelming the user with competing focal points, as well as the issue of accessibility and color vision deficiency. Ever since I unknowingly developed a traditional red-yellow-green scorecard for someone with a common color vision deficiency I am especially interested in accessibility. Talk about a learning opportunity!

When many of us choose color palettes, we just tinker until the design looks nice. But as Micaela Domingues of Biztory explains, we should consider the science behind color when designing visualizations. Her post gives a quick overview of color fundamentals, from hue-saturation value and red-green-blue values to the “mother of all color tools in the design world”—the color wheel.

In addition to recommendations for choosing color palettes wisely, Micaela also touches on the international meanings of color. Unless we design for international audiences, it’s easy to overlook how different colors are perceived in different countries around the world. 

If you’re talking about politics in the United States, for example, red is the Republican party and Blue is the Democratic party. In the U.S., Democrats are generally seen as progressives and Republicans are conservative, but that’s flipped in the United Kingdom! There, the center-left progressive Labour party is red and the Conservative Party, or Tories, is blue. In the U.S., red is seen as a negative alerting color, while in Chinese cultures red can symbolize good luck. 

For more on this subject, I highly recommend the blog Micaela mentions, Information is beautiful, or Colors and their meaning around the world from K-International.com for some general guidelines on improving accessibility, including but not limited to, the use of color.

When it comes to accessibility and color, Ockham's Razor holds true: that is, the simplest answer is generally the correct one. More simply put, less color is more. 

Ideally, we want our visualizations to convey information while requiring the least effort possible of the viewer, and accessibility is a major part of that goal. Henry Mak, from The Data School UK, recently shared a post on how to make your dashboards more accessible. In it, Henry touches on key best practices for accessible dashboard design. Of note here are his recommendations related to color usage: limit your use of different colors (demonstrated in the following images), avoid color confusion, and use adequate whitespace. 

Don't do this (left); Do this (right): 

With that, let’s dive into this month’s Best of the Tableau Web and see just what the #DataFam was up to in September! For updates throughout the month, follow me Twitter and LinkedIn, and check out the list of blogs that Andy Cotgreave and I follow for Best of the Tableau Web. If you don’t see yours on the list, we invite you to add it here.

Calculations

• How to Isolate Linear Regression Equations in Tableau

  Maddie Dierkes, Playfair Data

Formatting, Design, Storytelling

• Rapid Dashboarding - 5 Steps to Success

  Julie Laux, guest blog on The Flerlage Twins

• How to Keep Line End Labels from Overlapping Lines in Tableau

  Eric Parker, OneNumber

• Making Your Dashboard More Accessible

  Henry Mak, The Data School UK

• Tableau Formatting Series: How to Use Shading and Backgrounds

  Felicia Styer,, Playfair Data

• 3 Fun Tips for Containers in Tableau

  Spencer Baucke, Tessellation

• *New Viz* The Cost of Data: One sheet, two chart

  Lindsay Betzendahl, Viz Zen Data

• How to visualize Likert scale data broken down by different demographics

  Steve Wexler, Data Revelations

• How much change has occurred?

  Donna Coles, Donna + DataViz

• How to Color Your Data Wisely

  Micaela Domingues, Biztory

• The Essential Guide to Tableau Dashboard Optimization

  Interworks

• Colour Palettes on Tableau – Create your own colour palette or find existing palette

  Kier Bituin, The Data School Australia

• Ten Tips including "Show the Axis on the Top but Not the Bottom"

  Ken Flerlage, The Flerlage Twins

• Creating Custom Gauge & Needle Charts in Tableau

  Phil Perrin, Tessellation

Code

• Using Parameters to Switch Between Views – A Beginner Guide

  Frank Salmon, The Data School Australia

Inspiration

• Braindates Are Awesome.

  Adam Mico

• Wild at heart and weird on top

  Judit Bekker, Data Muggle

Server

• When do extracts run during the day?

  Donna Coles, Donna + DataViz

Tips and Tricks

• Five Ways to Create a Well-Documented Tableau Dashboard

  Alice McKnight, Tessellation

• How and Why to Make Box Plots in Tableau

  Maggy Muellner, Playfair Data

• Add “All” to a Dynamic Parameter

  Rosario Gauna, RosarioViz

• Place Bar Chart Labels Above Bars in Tableau

  Anthony Smoak, Smoak Signals

• How to Calculate a Dynamic Selected and Prior Fiscal Year Tooltip in Tableau

  Joe McFarren, Tessellation

• Fun with sets: Highlighting/filtering data using a shared attribute of a selected value in Tableau

  Darragh Murray

Visualizations

View last month’s Viz of the Day on Tableau Public gallery.