Contributor & Author: Tiffany Spaulding
Learning
Tableau is like learning to write. We start with single letters, uppercase and
lowercase before we ever build words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. If we
focus on just the penmanship aspect, our handwriting has hopefully evolved from
age 4 through now. As we evolve, we eventually develop our own style as we
are exposed to alternative handwriting families: script, caps, technical,
cursive, bubbly, architectural, and even the quick chicken-scratch every now
and then. Through repetition, we develop and hone the skill over time. The same
happens with our design style in Tableau, but instead of letters, we are
learning functionality: chart types, calculated fields, filters, groups, sorts,
hierarchies, and parameters.
Learning Focuses on Function:
As
new users become more comfortable with Tableau, they tend to search for ways to
make their dashboards stand out: testing new functionality, incorporating Jedi
hacks, pushing the barriers of what was conceivable, and using other
technologies to enhance Tableau. Some of the best dashboards in production
utilize none of the former enhancements, just basic Tableau functionality plus
a little something extra.
What Makes the Best Dashboards
Different?
- They are
clean, simple, and intuitive.
- They don't
fight Tableau but embrace its beauty.
- They
require minimal training or orientation to use the dashboard successfully.
- They
encourage curiosity, discovery and action.
- They
balance form and function.
Great Design Respects Form and
Function
The
most used dashboards gracefully balance form and function. Designing minimalist dashboards takes hours and hours of effort to polish, re-evaluate,
test, and redesign. Instead of simply knowing how to press buttons in Tableau,
to become great in the tool, you'll need to embrace design principles such as
proportion, balance, rhythm, and harmony. Knowing that most people who use
Tableau have never taken a course in 2D or graphic design, I'll be sprinkling
in a few posts here and there on graphic design basics and how to incorporate
them into Tableau. Let's ease into our first topic: color.
Use Color Palettes That Strengthen
the Data
A
very simple modification you can make to any dashboard is to design the color
palette relative to the story the data tells. If you are building a dashboard
looking at football stats for the Houston Texans, you'd probably incorporate
the Texans logo. To enhance the dashboard graphically, modify the color scheme
to a Houston Texans palette. All of us have emotional ties to color. Why not
utilize that emotion to strengthen the familiarity and connection of the
dashboard with the end user? Intuitive color palettes increase speed of
insight, giving your end user valuable time back in their day.
Step 1: Find Color Inspiration
Logos
are great places to start building a color palette from, but websites and
photos can work just as well. For kicks, let's pretend we are analyzing the
popularity of M&Ms candy by color. We could get close by randomly choosing
a yellow, green, red, blue, brown, and orange, or we could find a photo with
all the colors shown and then extract the colors from the picture.
Step 2: Build the Palette
- If you are
using Sample Superstore as your data source, drag any dimension with 6
members or more to the Color shelf on the Marks Card. I used Sub-Category
and then aliased the members to the M&M colors.
- Using the
drop down on the Marks Card, change your mark type to circle.
- Click the
Size button on the Marks Card and move the slider all the way to the right
to increase the circle sizes.
- Create a
Calculated Field for the label. Formula = "M"
- Drag your
new label field to Label on the Marks Card.
- Click the
Label button on the Marks Card and adjust the formatting.
Font = White,
36pt, Bold
Alignment = Middle Center
Alignment = Middle Center
Now
that our base view is built, look closely at the legend: Blue is shown as
Blue however Brown are shown as Orange. We need to edit our colors not only to
ensure each color matches the name, but to the exact shade of each M&M hue.
To
edit the colors, click the Color button on the Marks Card and select Edit Colors
(or double click the color legend). We can reassign the color values by
selecting any of the pre-built palettes from the drop down list in the top
right corner of the pop-up menu.
Side Note: In 8.x versions, this is where I
would leave Tableau and utilize a color tool such as Pixie Color
Picker to
scrape the HTML color codes. I'd then write XML code to build a custom color
palette in my Preferences file in the Tableau Repository.
Version
9 gave us a new feature called the Color Picker to make creating ad-hoc custom
palettes quicker and easier. To access the new tool, double click on the
colored square for Blue in the left hand column of the pop-up menu
("Select Data Item:"). A new popup menu titled "Select
Color" will appear.
- To begin
building your palette, click one of the white rectangles in the bottom
left corner under Custom colors.
- Next click
the "Pick Screen Color" button in the top left quadrant of the
pop up menu.
- Click
anywhere you want to pull the M&Ms blue color from. (Having dual
monitors makes the process a little easier, but you can navigate to
another program and it will read the next click.)
- Click
"Add to Custom Colors" to save the color to your palette.
- Press OK.
- Rinse and
Repeat selecting the second data item in the list at the left of the Edit
Colors menu. Work your way through all 6 colors.
Our
original view of the M&Ms now match the exact colors of the candy coating,
bringing familiarity and relativity to the data simply through color, shape,
and label.
Caution:
Building color palettes through the Pick Screen Color option is designed for
ad-hoc purposes. You are limited to 16 colors in your palette and it is only
active in the existing workbook while it is open. Once you save and close the
workbook, the Custom Colors will return to white rectangles once again. Any
data points assigned to your custom colors will remain encoded.
Step 3: Check the Palette for Color
Deficient Viewers
Tableau
has invested heavily in developing their color palettes to span the most users.
Should you choose to develop your own, please use an app such as Vischeck to ensure your new custom
color palette is friendly to color deficient viewers?
Step 4: Save Palette for Future Use
If
you need to share color palettes or save them for use across multiple
workbooks, check out this article on
how to write XML code in your Preferences.tps file. If you would like Tableau
developers to build in an option to save a Custom Colors palette from within
the pop-up menu, please upvote this post in the Community.