Visual Analytics Best Practices
This course teaches you to design visualisations that effectively share information and insights with others both inside and outside of your organisation.
ABOUT THIS COURSE
If you’re looking to strengthen your understanding of visual best practices, then this is the course for you.
The course starts with an understanding of what visual analytics is. The outcome is to design visualisations so they inform without misleading by using the right chart types based on the underlying data and the story that needs to be told.
The course will help you identify the most appropriate chart types to answer specific questions, apply best practices and considerations for a variety of chart types and how to effectively use chart types to answer specific questions.
Audience
Tableau users and analysts.
Duration: 1 day
Prerequisites: None
Lesson
We will show you how to best create data visualisations, as well as different types of visualisation and aspects of Data Integrity (typical political tricks!)
Outcome
Your understanding of what constitutes visual analytics and see the best and worst things that you can do.
Lesson
A very important part of your visualisation is to understand what you are trying to achieve, what is the purpose, who is the audience and what value does it bring to your organisation.
Outcome
You will realise that the right questions will lead to good visualisations of your data and that your analysis will be used to fuel exploration of your data and help drive business decisions.
Lesson
In this session you will see how choosing the right chart type depends on your data and what information you are trying to show to your audience.
Lab
During the Follow Me session you will create a:
- Time Comparison chart
- Comparison and Ranking chart
- Correlation chart
- Distribution chart
- Composition chart
- Geographical data chart
The exercises include creating a histogram, area chart and dual axis map.
Outcome
You will understand that depending on your data and what type of story you are trying to tell will depict which chart type is right for each occasion.
Lesson
Creating effective views requires effort, intuition, attention to detail and trial and error, however understanding pre-attentive attributes and how to use them in your visualisations will assist.
Lab
The Follow Me session is used to improve the views by adding preattentive attributes and creating a help icon.
The exercises include using colour, size, opacity, borders, changing to a better colour palette, modifying the title and editing the tooltips.
Outcome
By understanding the different types of preattentive attributes you will create more effective views.
Lesson
Here we look at a number of ways to ensure we create effective dashboards using some time honoured techniques.
Lab
To improve the readability, changing scrunched views, removing double encoding and removing change blindness we will use a Follow Me session.
For the exercise you will modify a dashboard so that it is more effective from a usability perspective.
Outcome
This will help you to create great dashboards, from a design, creation and formatting perspective.
Lesson
Here we look at general guidelines to assist in best practices around your dashboards and visualisations from both a design and implementation perspective.
Lab
The Follow Me session includes adding cascading filters to a dashboard and adding interactivity through highlight actions.
The final exercise uses your new found knowledge to change an existing dashboard and make improvements.
Outcome
These guidelines will assist you in creating great visualisations and get the most out of your dashboards.
Tell Me, I’ll Forget;
Show Me, I’ll Remember;
Let Me Do It, I’ll Understand
Lesson
We will show you how to best create data visualisations, as well as different types of visualisation and aspects of Data Integrity (typical political tricks!)
Outcome
Your understanding of what constitutes visual analytics and see the best and worst things that you can do.
Lesson
A very important part of your visualisation is to understand what you are trying to achieve, what is the purpose, who is the audience and what value does it bring to your organisation.
Outcome
You will realise that the right questions will lead to good visualisations of your data and that your analysis will be used to fuel exploration of your data and help drive business decisions.
Lesson
In this session you will see how choosing the right chart type depends on your data and what information you are trying to show to your audience.
Lab
During the Follow Me session you will create a:
- Time Comparison chart
- Comparison and Ranking chart
- Correlation chart
- Distribution chart
- Composition chart
- Geographical data chart
The exercises include creating a histogram, area chart and dual axis map.
Outcome
You will understand that depending on your data and what type of story you are trying to tell will depict which chart type is right for each occasion.
Lesson
Creating effective views requires effort, intuition, attention to detail and trial and error, however understanding pre-attentive attributes and how to use them in your visualisations will assist.
Lab
The Follow Me session is used to improve the views by adding preattentive attributes and creating a help icon.
The exercises include using colour, size, opacity, borders, changing to a better colour palette, modifying the title and editing the tooltips.
Outcome
By understanding the different types of preattentive attributes you will create more effective views.
Lesson
Here we look at a number of ways to ensure we create effective dashboards using some time honoured techniques.
Lab
To improve the readability, changing scrunched views, removing double encoding and removing change blindness we will use a Follow Me session.
For the exercise you will modify a dashboard so that it is more effective from a usability perspective.
Outcome
This will help you to create great dashboards, from a design, creation and formatting perspective.
Lesson
Here we look at general guidelines to assist in best practices around your dashboards and visualisations from both a design and implementation perspective.
Lab
The Follow Me session includes adding cascading filters to a dashboard and adding interactivity through highlight actions.
The final exercise uses your new found knowledge to change an existing dashboard and make improvements.
Outcome
These guidelines will assist you in creating great visualisations and get the most out of your dashboards.