Why I created the FT Visual Vocabulary in Tableau

As the Head Coach of The Data School, I need to be on top of all things Tableau so that I can pass that knowledge onto our trainees. What I really hope they pick up is my method for learning and my constant to desire to get better at my craft. When they graduate from The Data School, they're clearly some of the best Alteryx and Tableau users in the World. While that's fantastic, unless they have an approach to problem solving, a thirst for learning, and a passion for sharing, I have failed as their coach, teacher, and mentor.

WHAT IS THE VISUAL VOCABULARY?

From the Financial Times Github page, the Visual Vocabulary is:

A poster and web site to assist designers and journalists to select the optimal symbology for data visualisations, by the Financial Times Visual Journalism Team.The FT Visual Vocabulary is at the core of a newsroom-wide training session aimed at improving chart literacy. This learning resource is inspired by the Graphic Continuum by Jon Schwabish and Severino Ribecca. This is not an attempt to teach everyone how to make charts, but how to recognise the opportunities to use them effectively alongside words.

I had the honour of giving a talk to them right after I released my Tableau version and it was interesting to hear WHY they created it. They needed a way for their journalism and graphics teams to quickly pick a chart that works, plug in the data, and off they go. I even got a live demo, which was fascinating to watch. Thank you to Alan Smith and his team for inviting me over and for making me feel so welcome. Honestly, I never thought I'd get to meet Alan; he's like a god in the data viz space.

WHY DID I CREATE A TABLEAU VERSION?

As I previously mentioned, I am constantly looking for learning opportunities. I hadn't built many of the charts in the Visual Vocabulary before, so I knew that I'd learn a lot. For example, I had never built these charts:

1. Violin plot
2. Circle timeline
3. Seismogram
4. Sunburst chart
5. Arc chart
6. Venn diagram
7. Scaled cartogram
8. Sankey chart
9. Chord diagram

That's nine opportunities to learn and develop my skills. I can now use these as practice exercises at The Data School so that the knowledge can be passed along.[caption id='attachment_12075' align='alignnone' width='705'] Tableau version of the FT Visual Vocabulary[/caption]

THE VALUE OF SHARING

As a Tableau Zen Master, I take my responsibility to share with the community very seriously. Ever since I started blogging, I did it with three purposes in mind:

1. To document what I was learning
2. To have a repository that I can refer to later
3. To allow other to learn from what I've learned

Ultimately, allowing others to learn from what I've learned is by far the most important to me personally. If I can help someone learn faster, I should. If you can help someone learn faster, you should. Pass on the knowledge you've gained and it'll pay you back tenfold.And this is the core value that stands behind both The Information Lab and The Data School. Keeping our knowledge to ourselves won't help us grow as a company and as a brand. We're evangelists for Alteryx and Tableau and if evangelize, people will look to us when they need help, which in turn encourages us to share even more.I drill into The Data Schoolers how important blogging, Tableau Public, and the Alteryx Community are to building their personal brands. No one will build you brand for you; you have to take ownership of it yourself. Don't believe me? Check out the volume of content that the team produces on the blog. There are an incredible amount of tips and trick to help you learn Alteryx and Tableau. There are hundreds and hundreds of visualizations to draw inspiration from. Check out their Tableau Public profiles and see how they've developed. Connect with them on LinkedIn and see where they've been able to go on their placements and the roles they now have.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

I challenge you, the reader of this post, to share. Share the Visual Vocabulary. Blog and share what you are learning. Share your visualizations.Pass it on.