One of the best things about my job is that I come in contact with all kinds of cool technology and start ups, whether they are direct clients or partners of clients I work with. I just started to work with Tableau Software a data visualization company who’s been in the enterprise BI business for a while.
This got me interested in the field and I’ve been looking around to figure out the ‘who’s who’ of the data viz industry. What’s been fantastic to see is the merger between design and data (information) and while I had a peripheral view of this, now that I’m diving into it I find it endlessly fascinating. In the world of penta-bytes we absolutely need data visualization to understand. And there are two key dimensions that I see:
One is the INTERACTIVITY of the data (see example below). What’s up with flat graphics hat only show one POV? How fun is to interact with graphics and have your own view. As my client says, this will become the new standard. We will all expect that when we see a chart online we can play with it.
Second is the DESIGN of the data. The use of sign and signifier can take a simple chart into an entire new level. designers that do this, go beyond know Photoshop they truly need to understand the content of the data itself to produce designs that communicate in seconds a level of complexity.
So next time you are dealing with a daunting excel spreadsheet, know that in there somewhere a BEAUTIFUL visualization is hiding. And no longer, Apple can claim spreadsheets aren’t cool.
Check out this INTERACTIVE World Cup graphic on Tableau:
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