The world is really fast changing since the 20th century with the advent of technology. Today, you can practically do anything on your computer with the use of the Internet like designing homes and infrastructure, solving math and accounting problems, even drawing and telling a story. Where before we only learned stories from books and other media, these days tableau storytelling with data is made easier using very important tools from the Internet. This isn’t your ordinary storytelling though, but it’s another facet. Read on to better understand.
What is Data Visualisation?
If you’re a surfer, you may have come across visual elements such as tables, charts, graphs, maps and the like, on the Internet. Sure, these figures tell lots of stories although you don’t read them in words. Instead, you read data through visualisation. It means data and information have a graphical representation for users to be able to see and understand trends and patterns in those data. Now, there are tools to give designers an effortless way of making visual representations of large data sets. However, it isn’t the usual tool you and I have in mind. It’s in fact a software which gets data from a certain source and turns that data into visual graphs, tables, charts, dashboards, and so on. In other words, data visualisation tools make life easier for designers as they can easily craft anything from a simple pie graph to anything complicated.
3 Best Data Visualisation Tools
Since there are numerous tools available, we focus on three of the best according to the opinions of experts. These are Tableau, Datawrapper, and Google Charts.
Tableau
Tableau is said to be the most popular and widely-used data visualisation tool, generating any type of visualisation you can imagine. Though a bit more expensive, said tool has an accessible free public version plus video tutorials offered for those who wish to learn how to use it. Its public version comes without cost but only, it doesn’t let you keep data analyses private. With a powerful mapping ability, the Tableau Public is a great tool for creating data visualisation in a range of settings.
Datawrapper
Datawrapper was designed for adding interactive maps and charts to news stories that are embedded on news websites. The chief method used is copying and pasting data into the tool. After importing data, you can create charts with just a click. Specifically made for newsroom data visualisation, the tool also comes in a free plan but the paid plan is on the pricey side.
Google Charts
Google Charts, another powerful tool, is purposely designed to create interactive charts for embedding online. It is offered for free with a wide selection of formats to choose from. Data comes from Google Spreadsheets, Salesforce, Google Fusion Tables, and so on. Chart types include column and bar charts, pie charts, timelines, maps, histograms and lots more, that you can easily customise with CSS editing.
So, you might be asking yourself, “why do people have to use data visualisation to get the message across?” Of course, designers just want to make information that is impossible to discern more understandable for the stakeholders. Using tableau storytelling with data, it would be easier for you to see some patterns and trends in a snap.