Before you answer questions about all that you've learned so
far, I want you to hear from Scott and Cole again.
They're going to share some amazing resources so
that you can create great data visualizations.
What tools or resources would you recommend that students use?
>> There are things like D3, right.
There are like JavaScript libraries and these tools that are built.
To help you build totally customized visualizations.
So that's sort of like on the advanced end.
On the other hand you have tools that are a little more like create, kind of
create a canned visualizations like a chart wizard built into Microsoft Excel.
>> Mm. >> Or.
Or also like OpenOffice or LibreOffice, like these other sort of office type
programs, which are really great, or Apple's Numbers does more things.
Tableau I think is a fantastic tool for starting out and they just came out with
a Mac version, which is great, as it opens it up to a lot of us who use Macs,
and Tableau, I, I don't want to say it makes like, they're not like
canned visualizations but it let's you just like, really fast, drop a data set on
there and give yourself like a number of visual representations of that data.
So you're like, oh show me this as a bar chart.
Show me, to me as a area chart, line chart, whatever.
Or if this is geographic data like, show me this data on a map.
Like in a really fast way.
So that's an awesome, sort of like exploratory tool and on the technical side,
you know, there's like the other end of the spectrum from D3.
Now in-between, there's a lot of stuff in-between like other chart libraries or
online tools.
The tools I think I'm excited about right now are sort of in this.
In between place where, where they
let you sort of dump your data in and generate some sort of visualization.
But it's not trying to be the final visualization.
And then you export that, bring it in to some other tool, and
start adjusting it.
So for example there's a tool out of the Density Design Lab.
In Italy called RAW.
>> Hm. >> That's capital R-A-W.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And you put some, basically drop your data on it and
it figures out sort of this is a representation I think will work.
But it doesn't give you, and, and it's all, like ,in one page.
It's kind of like one, two, three.
You just go down this list and then you get, like, a graphic of some sort.
And then you take that graphic, and you export it, and maybe bring it into
Illustrator, or some other program where you can do kind of the manual steps.
So then you can say, oh can we not set my, my fills and
strokes and then reposition things.
I think that's like, really nice and
really powerful, because it, it doesn't involve any coding.
It doesn't involve a steep learning curve.
And it also doesn't burden you with an interface that gives you a million like,
options for customization.
>> Mm. >> It's just saying I'm just going to get you started and
like get you past that initial push so you have this one graphic and
then you can take it and tweak it.
So there's a lot of exciting stuff like that I think that you can use.
So what tools or resources would you recommend for students who are getting
started be it maybe it's a blog or a particular software tool that you use.
>> Sure so when it comes to tools I think my number one piece of
advice is try not to let your tool be a limiting factor.
>> Mm. >> Right. Take the tool that you know and
get to know it as well as you can.
Most tools can be bent to meet your needs and
you can add more tools to your repertoire over time.
But, the knowledge of fancy tools need not be a barrier for entry in this space.
I, for example, do almost all of my work in Excel.
Because, it's still the most pervasive for business communications,
which is where I spend the majority of my time.
When it comes to other resources out there, there is a wealth of information in
the blogosphere, an a lot of really great content.
One word of advise, is there's a lot of not great content as well,
so be a discerning.
Purveyor of data visualizations, right?
When you come across a graph in a newspaper or
in a blog, study it and note what you like and what you don't like.
And work to emulate those things that you see in other people's work that works
well and avoid the bad.
When it comes to some specific blogs that I'd recommend, and
again there are a whole lot of good ones out there, but
I'll go through just a couple of my favorites today.
First off is the Functional Art.
So this is done by Alberto Cairo,
he has a book of the same name that we talked about briefly.
Next is Visualizing Data which, which Andy Kirk runs.
Flowing Data is Nathan Yau's blog and
he curates a lot of stuff that other people do and.
Yeah, another good example.
And then I would be remiss not to mention my own blog at Storytelling with Data.
And actually one more resource while we're flipping through pages here
is John Schwab's Help Me Viz.
So we talked earlier about seeking feedback.
This is a place where you can actually submit data visualizations and
get feedback from the community and has been growing and
has some really good content.
Also if you're interested in just looking for data visualizations and
examples of good stuff and bad stuff, it's, a nice place to flip through.
>> Wonderful.