Always learning is a good thing. Here I’m learning a bit more about Vizology with each post, I hope you are as well. And I’m learning on the blogging – how many little viz things go into a viz(so lots of updates) and today how things can get ahead of myself. In my excitement to have the Tableau viz’s up and how much fun they are to do, it seems I missed a step in the build my tracker story.

First, the colours. If you recall back before the BANs post, I talked about a waffle chart to track my posting process, that it showed orange and blue squares for viz and blog posts. I also said colour is important, which is true, What is next, step 2 if you like, is to use the colours and formats better to see.

I do love the default Tableau colours, they are good for differentiation, they have more experts than just me making them, are well thought out for the colour blind and they make it easy for me to see where a chart or dashboard was done in Tableau. But if we are honest, the blue and orange are a little strong. And I’m not really tracking on what type of post I make – the effort is to get me posting enough. So perhaps it can improve, which is what I did in version 2. What did I do to make it a bit more eye grabbing?

• Custom Palette: Default is great, having your own colours better. So I applied one of the schemes I like in Tableau to my viz. Better for my eyeballs, gives a bit of constancy and branding for me and helps the viz stand out.
• Both Blog and Viz posted to Green: Green is good, posting is good, and I want to be positive in the achievements. Both are now the same colour, which actually tracks the data I want – 36 posts. Not how many of each.
• Less chart junk: Removed a few of the background lines on the waffle chart to tidy up, make it friendly on the eyeballs. More on this in the future, for now you can check out a video from one of my DataViz Heroes Datasaurus Rex
• Grey for the undone: The incomplete items are not the focus, so I turned them to a light shade of grey. You can still see the part to the whole view of the waffle chart, just now the focus is on the good (done) part

With those changes, how does it look?

Hope you agree that looks a lot better than version 1.

As to what did I learn about blogging? Well, perhaps I need a better editorial plan for the posts. I’ll admit to being bad at check lists personally and that I keep learning material to post as I’m in the flow of making a viz or post so its hard to know the full plan with I start out. But a plan that forms or gets amended in my head has the weakness of staying in my head and thus getting lost in the flow. As in this case, I got so excited with the final form I jumped a step. So my take away from this post – write down somehow (mindmaps I’m thinking of you) all that I want to say for a Viz series so I don’t jump ahead too often.

I can’t promise perfection, I can promise to learn and be better. Wish me luck.

What are BANs? Are they a way to get banned from Twitter? From the movies? The coffee shop?

No , they are some Big Ass Numbers. They should be BIG, they should be numbers and they of course should support your data story and viz with meaning.

For some views and dashboards to communicate, you may have a few key datapoints, call them KPIs or OKRs if you like. They often represent a headline concept, or key piece of data someone (or everyone) in your audience wants to see instantly. Don’t risk them being missed in a chart – though a chart that can answer any why question is useful. Put them up front and Center, and big so they can see.

Made money in the quarter – BAN. Beating the SLA – BAN. Website traffic down – BAN. BAN the numbers in a highly viewable way to answer the first question that your audience cares about.

How do I apply, lets check version 3 of that tracking sheet. My waffle grid is cool, it has the numbers there to see and a pattern that helps a viewer make a very quick percentage completed assessment. But it also makes you do some mental work, if say you want to know the exact %, or just how many posts have been made. Let’s BAN those for ease of use, they might be the info your really want to see.

There we go, once I post this post and update the data, I’ll have a bit more progress, which my BANs will give me a super quick view I need. I can use the waffle chart to see things, approximate the postings and progress – believe me, there will be a great sense of satisfaction as the squares all turn green (more than just the % number going up).

So many more ways to improve a viz exist, however I think its time to start off a new series. I’ve learned lots posting the first set – like how much goes into a simple viz to share, that I’ll try out a series of posts along a theme and build like this to tell the story, make the topics digestible bite sized posts and that I will likely need to keep the different Tableau dashboards and data separate for each one, to avoid updates messing up an early post.

Give BANs a try on your next viz, comment below how they go.

Green does not mean stop. People trust blue. Italian sports cars come in certain colours for good reason – to create emotional reactions and experience. Colours around the world, around you, all have meanings and importance. Getting them right in a Viz can make the difference between meh and wow, even out to whether your audience understands and sees the key insight you worked so hard to bring to life.

What does Blue mean to you? What do you think of? The wide open sky? Certain brands or products that captured blue in our imagination? Trust may come to mind, which could explain why so many banks have blue logos. What about robin egg blue?

Or #81D8D0 or R:129 G:216 B:208 . to be exact.

Tiffany’s come to mind as having captured that colour? Knowing and applying colour theory to your viz can grab attention better, and make you more aware in case you are targeting an audience of a different culture – you’ll learn more about them and their culture and you’ll know more about colours.

What if you viz’d and people couldn’t read it? What if you didn’t know that nearly 8% of men have some kind of colour blindness that changes the way they interpret colour? – It could even be you. Knowing that there is a small but non trivial group out there that can’t see some red/green combinations should make you skip those as your primary colours.

What if you wanted to stand out? Or have your own personal brand and style? Wouldn’t you want to include that in your viz , more than just a little logo at the bottom? Personalising the colours that works for you, or if you are making them for another person/company/entity, making it more fun, more yours and something to stand out from the default crowd.

Need to practice that a bit and working at a company? Be sure to always use the company or corporate colours in your work viz’s. It may sound a bit boring, but the corporate colours often have a lot of thought put into them, to contrast well, to accommodate the colour blind and to send the right message about the firm. Having your viz, which may be dashboard or copied into a powerpoint deck or blog, in the same colours as the rest makes you look that little more professional, that little more consistent and memorable for the right reason (insight) not the wrong one (jarring colour combination in materials that made people look away or reach for sunglasses).

So grab that colour, well the RGB or HEX value of your colour. Get a photo with the colours you think pop and you want to use. Come back soon for another blog on how to get the colours you want, from photos, complementary, contrasting or just triangulating. And take a moment to look at colours in your viz to give it a bit more meaning. It sets you ahead of the crowd, which is where you want to be.

ps – you rarely see the blue orange default colours on Tableau Public’s Viz of the day

What better way to start a blog about Viz than with a viz to help me make regular updates to hit my goal. One of the many reasons I love Vizology is its ability to make change happen – in this case its meant to make me post content and visuals for you, establish a cadence and see progress.

So I’m going to start with a mini Waffle Chart. This chart shows parts to a whole – like a completion rate, how much of the total is done (or not done). Visuals like this are good for a quick approximation of the progress, not the exact percentage done, and would not be good for comparing two or three things together.

Since I aim for biweekly posts, and ten viz’s this year, that makes an even 36. Thirty-six is a 6 by 6 matrix which is helpful in making a square Wafffle chart. I’ve gone with Tableau for that visual, given its ease of use, the ready availability of a site (Tableau Public) to create, host and share content and its an awesome tool. More on that later.

Below, embedded if all is working, is the first version of the viz. A 6 by 6 grid based on manual dataset, where I tick off if a Blog or Viz as I post in a Google Sheet. I left this in the default Tableau colours for now, where blue is a blog, orange is a viz and grey is yet to come.

You can check the link out by clicking, even download the Viz to see how it works. It’s pretty easy – dataset that includes the rows and column value, and a datapoint beside each. You can take that further with calculated fields, multiple data columns, changing the size to say 10X10 which shows percent completion better. You can pull this off in other tools, a grid on Excel or even a table in a word processor. The idea is to share a visual that imparts a quick sense of progress at a glance.

As for me, the visual is there to keep me motivated to publish and share more. Visit again in a week or so, see what’s new/