Tableau is Powerful! Here is Why
My thoughts on Tableau as a Data Visualization tool
Tableau is, without a doubt, one of the most popular visualization tools in the market today. Tableau has a strong community, supported by big players in the data space. (Check out Tableau Ambassador)
In my opinion, its popularity is well-supported by the quality of the products — especially Tableau Desktop and Server.
How I use Tableau
As a Data Analytics Consultant and BI Developer, I use Tableau every day in my work, building dynamic and interactive dashboards to drive various business decisions effectively.
Beyond the professional work, I also began to build personal Tableau dashboards simply because I love how I can translate my visions into actual and tangible visualizations through Tableau.
Just the other day, I was thinking about my wife’s pregnancy and decided to create a week-by-week baby size comparison to fruits dashboard, which turned out to be quite an interesting and informative dashboard for parents-to-be. With Tableau, I was able to quickly build it, bringing ideas to life!
A few days ago, I came across this dataset containing the top 100 Australian suburbs that experienced the most growth between 1993 and 2018. I was able to pull out data visualization which allows you to consume the data in a way that a simple spreadsheet report couldn’t achieve.
These are some of the examples that demonstrate Tableau’s visual capability. Now, I would like to address a few aspects I particularly like about Tableau and why I consider Tableau a powerful Data visualization tool.
Interactive Dashboards: A Gateway to Data Exploration
Tableau offers great capabilities to develop interactive dashboards that empower and enable users to slice and dice the data and consume data to drive specific insights. From drilling down into specific data points to filtering out unnecessary data, Tableau empowers users to interact with data in ways that were once impossible with just a few clicks.
Collaboration with Design Tools
One of the ways to enrich Tableau dashboards is by collaborating with design tools like Canva or Figma. With this collaboration, design capability feels endless. I often create tailored background images for my dashboards, making the dashboard stand out, creating the theme, and helping with storytelling.
Flexibility through Calculated Fields
From my experience, one of Tableau’s greatest strengths is its flexibility through calculated fields. With custom calculations and parameter functions, users can make calculations and parameters dynamic and interactive making the dashboards incredibly flexible. Not only it can handle simple aggregations, but it also allows users to play with advanced math calculations, enabling custom charts.
It’s your turn!
Whether you are looking to change your career, or you are simply interested in visualization, Tableau is there for you to try!
It offers a 14-day free trial making it easy for you to taste what building Tableau dashboards is like. There are countless tools that would help you start — free courses, blog posts, and sample dashboards you can download.
Data is fun and visualization is even more!
Build your first dashboard and let me know how you went!
Here is my tableau profile: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/jeff.hwapyeong.kim/vizzes
