In this course, you will analyze and apply essential design principles to your Tableau visualizations. This course assumes you understand the tools within Tableau and have some knowledge of the fundamental concepts of data visualization. You will define and examine the similarities and differences of exploratory and explanatory analysis as well as begin to ask the right questions about what’s needed in a visualization. You will assess how data and design work together, including how to choose the appropriate visual representation for your data, and the difference between effective and ineffective visuals. You will apply effective best practice design principles to your data visualizations and be able to illustrate examples of strategic use of contrast to highlight important elements. You will evaluate pre-attentive attributes and why they are important in visualizations. You will exam the importance of using the "right" amount of color and in the right place and be able to apply design principles to de-clutter your data visualization.
This course is part of the Data Visualization with Tableau Specialization
Offered By
Data Visualization with Tableau SpecializationUniversity of California, DavisAbout this Course
Learner Career Outcomes
15%
20%
Comfortable working with data and datasets.
What you will learn
Examine and improve an ineffective visualization
Examine and improve an ineffective visualization
Apply visualization best practices
Create and design visualizations that work best for the target audience
Skills you will gain
Learner Career Outcomes
15%
20%
Comfortable working with data and datasets.
Offered by
University of California, Davis
UC Davis, one of the nation’s top-ranked research universities, is a global leader in agriculture, veterinary medicine, sustainability, environmental and biological sciences, and technology. With four colleges and six professional schools, UC Davis and its students and alumni are known for their academic excellence, meaningful public service and profound international impact.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Getting Started in Effective and Ineffective Visuals
Welcome to this first module where we are going to start you off with background information about how the human brain perceives the world and then you will discover effective and ineffective visuals. By the end of this module, you will be able to recognize how the brain relates to visual design. You will know the difference between cognitive versus perceptual design. You will learn the various visualization options offered by Tableau and some of their advantages and disadvantages. You will discuss why how good ethical practices play in designing visualizations. You will also start to examine ineffective visualizations and learn how to improve them.
Visual Perception and Cognitive Load
Welcome to this second module. This module will explore specific data visualization concepts that apply the concepts you learned about how the human brain works from the last module. In this module, you will be able to define cognitive load and what clutter means from a visualization perspective. You will be able to visually illustrate the principles of visual perception and use contrast to enhance your visualizations. You will be able to define and use pre-attentive attributes like color to make effective visualizations.
Design Best Practices and Exploratory Analysis
In this module, we revisit some of the concepts introduced from the previous module. You will be able to apply Gestalt Principles and leverage pre-attentive attributes in your visualizations. You will examine the role of accessibility and aesthetics play in your creations. Also, you will be able to define the ideas of exploratory and explanatory analysis and be able to normalize your data and identify outliers. Finally, you will be introduced to a challenging concept and construct a control chart to set you up to perform more advanced exploratory analysis.
Design for Understanding
Making sense of large, multi-dimensional data sets can be a challenge for anyone. Your task as a designer is to make good decisions about encoding, arranging, and presenting data to reveal meaningful patterns and stories for your audiences. After completing this module, you will be able to design your visualizations for a target audience and with purpose. You will be able to identify the connection to between data, relationships and good visual design. You will implement additional design tools and tips into your visualizations.
Reviews
TOP REVIEWS FROM ESSENTIAL DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR TABLEAU
Pros: you learn basic design principles that help you to make visual appealing visualization. Cons: It felt way too theoretical and high level. It would be nice to do more exercises with Tableau.
I enjoyed the class much, however I would suggest that a little more for feedback could be provided to questions raised by students. Also, PLEASE make the slides available for ALL the lessons.
I enjoyed the second course as part of this five-course data analytics specialism. I am learning that effective data visualisation goes far beyond having a technical competence of Tableau.
This course really changed my perspective in how to create visualization not just using Tableau but in every visualization application. I'm very happy I could take it and learned from it.
About the Data Visualization with Tableau Specialization
In 2020 the world will generate 50 times the amount of data as in 2011. And 75 times the number of information sources (IDC, 2011). Being able to use this data provides huge opportunities and to turn these opportunities into reality, people need to use data to solve problems.
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