April 25, 2018
Bridget Cogley
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Comments Off on Tableau Mapping for 2018.1 and Beyond

Tableau Mapping for 2018.1 and Beyond

I did a webinar with Joshua Milligan (link forthcoming) and touched on some of the following topics:

  • GIS
  • Formatting
  • Legends
  • Dual Axis

GIS

When Tableau added native shape support, I cheered, danced, and about flew to the moon. It made life so much easier than trying to find/make and blend polygons. Naturally, finding shape files became the next battle…

Now, Alteryx makes this easy with a little shape-crafting voodoo magic. I work with an expert and she went through the whole kit and kaboodle so I don’t have to. Give it a watch.

One of my favorite ways to create shapefiles is Google Earth.

It’s very accessible and you can find my run through on this here.

Fun with Formatting

I’ve mentioned my map background removal tip before and provided a few examples. Decision-making I take into account when formatting a map:

  • What am I trying to show with this map?
    • Geographic patterns over time, such as pops of traffic in cities or demographic shifts: Small multiples or a film strip type chart might work out great.
    • Patterns that rely on geography to see, such as how states get bigger as they move west. Really, someone got tired on those later states. Look east and you get all kind of craggy lines. Go west, you get more square minus oddball states like California. Blame that one on the gold rush…
    • Something else that relies on the cool factor of maps. Key is you want to know why.
  • What ISN’T important?
    • Do I really need to see all the lakes, labels and the like? Chances are, no.
    • Are country boundaries important to this analysis? If it’s purely a domestic analysis, I can safely hide that information too.
    • Do I really need labels if I can hover and I’m relying on the geography to supply clues to locations?
    • What will people scream about if I take off? Everything else goes.
  • How varied is my data right now and how much will it vary with new data or filters?
    • This may affect color choices, use of borders, and also what gets hidden.
    • What is my focus again?

I tend to reduce as much as possible and see what I need to add back in. It lessens the distractions and overall makes things tidy. I treat borders on objects as equally important as the color itself. Borders should support your color choices, not compete.

Lovely Legends

I need to do a whole post on this. Remind me, will ya?

While Tableau provides legends, I like to include interactivity that I see other places, like D3. I also like to vary it up and make it near-seamless with the dashboard.

I’ve grouped these, which is what the color is.

Bubble legend that reinforces the region’s position and color choice AND provides a total for the region. People love to hate circles, yet they love to see circles. These are less about accuracy and more about providing a legend that packs a surprise bit of info. If you still get hate mail after that, there’s always squares and hexagons.

Dual Axis Happiness

When in doubt, it can be solved with dual axis a scary amount of the time.

Highlight regions and states? Dual axis.

Dual encode color? Dual axis.

Various semi- superfluous bits of formatting? Dual axis.

I’ve found dual axis to be the answer to most questions that involve the words and or with, such as how do I show this year AND last year or how do I show contribution WITH region highlighted? When in doubt, try dual axis.

The dashboards…

It’s the real reason you’re here.

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