Welcome

Tableau in motion | Tableau’s new native animations

Paul Isaacs

Staff Engineer

Tableau

# T C 1 8

Amanda Luthy

Senior QA Engineer

Tableau

Agenda

Tableau Animation: What and Why?

Theory and Design

Usage and Best Practices

Our Team

Q&A

Tableau Animation: What and Why?

“Follow the Treat!”

Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energizedfocus, full involvement, and enjoyment of the activity.”

Good Ol Wikipedia

“One More Round”

“Scatterplot Shell Game”

Scatterplot on Page Shelf

The Problem:What mark went where?

“Comings and Goings”

Filtering Bars In And Out

The Problem:Which mark left? Which mark is new?

“Will it Slice?”

Slicing vs Non-Slicing filters.

The Problem:Which is it? What’s the difference?

“Wait, What?”

Dashboard Filtering

The Problem:What just happened? What are these things and how do they relate?

“Sort of Confusing”

Sorting By Different Criteria

The Problem:It’s hard to understand the different options, or follow a manual sort.

“Another Dimension”

Sorting Nested Dimensions

The Problem:When dimensions nest, each dimension sorts differently. Do you know the difference?

“Home On the Range”

Tableau Frames to Fit the Range of Values

The Problem:Changes in framing can be disorienting when adding or removing marks.

“Pane and Suffering”

Swapping, Adding, and Removing Measures

The Problem:It’s the shell game again, this time with sub-panes..

Part 1 Recap

Flow

Analysis

Presentation

Theory and Design

Disclaimer!

Part 1: What and Why?The last section showed a Tableau Prototype with features we hope to release.

Part 2: Theory and DesignMuch of what we show you in this section is NOT part of Tableau. It contains missteps, bad versions of things, hidden debug features, and other people’s work.

Motion is Beautiful

And Data is Beautiful

Animating Data: We must choose wisely

Early Brainstorming

In the beginning, nothing was off the table.

Personality?

Frame from Chuck Jones’ “High Note,” in which music notes come to life.

Physics?

Flocking?

Back To Reality

Clippy’s Sins

• Attempted Cuteness

• Making People Wait

• Valueless Distraction

• Distancing From Task

Tableau Best Practices

Know your audience

Consider display size

Plan for fast load times

Leverage the sweet spot

Limit number of views & colors

Add interactivity to encourage exploration

Format Largest to Smallest

Leverage ToolTips

Eliminate Clutter

Test

10 Best Practices for Building Effective Dashboards Ellen Nadelhoffer

Preattentive Attributes

Motion is a Preattentive Attribute

Three Principles

Always Tell The Truth

Be Direct

Fast for Analysis, Slow for Presentation

“Don’t Go There”

Jockeying for Position

It looks cool when marks behave like physical entities jockeying for position.

But such animations lie…

Always Tell The Truth

No Squash or Stretch

No Collision Detection or Jockeying for Position

“Please No Bouncing"

Motion that is not Direct

It’s fun. But we’re not here to provide fun, we’re here to provide clarity.

“What happens at the Bellagio stays at the Bellagio”

Ripple Delays

Pretty, but they hide meaning.

“Don’t Delay!”

Be Direct

No Bending or Smoothing of Paths

Start & End Keys only

No Anticipation, Overshoot or Bouncing

No Ripple Delays

Fast for Analysis, Slow for Presentation

Short durations keep work flowing.

Longer times allow for showing.

Part 2 Recap

It’s all about clarity.

Tableau animation is a way for us to communicate to you what Tableau is doing, and what is happening to the data.

Anything else is superfluous.

*Fun can come later! But only if/when YOU want to add it.

Usage and Best Practices

“Is This Thing On?”

Accessing Controls

The Problem:You want to use animation, and you need to know the entry points.

“Whoa! I said, Whoa!”

Slowing it Down

The Problem:There are a lot of moving pieces and you want to take a closer look.

I exited, I moved, I sorted, I entered.”

Not Julius Caesar

“Fire Phasers!”

Filtering a Sorted Graph

1. Fade to Exit

2. Change Measures

3. Perform New Sort

4. Fade to Enter

“I Only Have Eyes For You”

Animation with Highlighting

It’s easier to follow multiple highlighted marks with animation.

“Too Much of a Good Thing”

Isolate Your Animations

The Problem:You’ve got multiple vizesanimating on a dashboard and you’d really just like one or two to move.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

Mark Twain

“Don’t Lie By Leaving Things Out”

Because.

The Problem:You’ve got some data and you really want to gloss over a bit of bad news. Should you?

Spoiler: No.

Part 3 Recap

Choose the Right Speed

Choose between Sync’ed, Phased, or Cut

Try Highlighting

Keep it Clean

Don’t Lie

Tableau in motion | Tableau’s new native animations

S E S S I O N R E P E AT S

Thursday Oct 25 | 10:45AM – 11:45AM | MCCNO – L2-225

Tableau in motion | Tableau’s new native animations

Thursday Oct 25 | 2:15PM – 3:15PM | MCCNO – L3 – 352

Tableau Labs: Animations in Tableau

R E L AT E D S E S S I O N S

Wed Oct 24 | 12:15PM – 5:45PM | Idea Lab 10

Tableau Labs: Animations in TableauThurs Oct 25 | 12:00PM – 2:30PM | Idea Lab 12

Please complete the

session survey from the

Session Details screen

in your TC18 app

Pre-release Program

http://tableau.com/getbeta

Our Team

Who Are You People?

Sean Boon – Principal Project Manager

Jamie Campbell –Senior Engineering Manager

Paul Isaacs – Staff Software Engineer

Kyle Johns – Principal Software Engineer

Walter Litwinczyk – Senior Software Engineer

Amanda Luthy – Senior QA Engineer

Katrina Midgley – Product Manager

Allison Whilden – Staff UX Designer

Q&A

References

• Animation & Data Visualization:• https://medium.com/state-of-analytics/animated-data-visualizations-do-

they-help-or-hinder-the-user-experience-27f638b24b7c• http://vis.stanford.edu/files/2007-AnimatedTransitions-InfoVis.pdf• https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~stasko/papers/infovis08-anim.pdf

• Tableau Best Practices:• https://www.tableau.com/learn/whitepapers/10-best-practices-building-effective-

dashboards• https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/dashboards_best_practices.html

• Preattentive Attributes:• https://learnforeverlearn.com/preattentive/• https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/preattentive-visual-properties-and-how-to-use-them-in-

information-visualization

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