So, we're sitting down here with Sarah Battersby at Tableau Software.
So, Sarah, just go ahead and tell us a little bit about what you do here at Tableau.
So, I work for Tableau research.
So, my background is that I'm a cartographer by training.
I used to be an academic faculty member at University,
teaching cartography and visualization classes.
And now, at Tableau as part of the research team,
I work a lot with the mapping team and the visualization team,
helping people think about how do you do visualizations better,
how do you help people prevent them from doing the wrong things,
just help them make visualizations that are going to make sense.
And that's obviously where we want to start, making visualizations better.
So, when you're coming and you're trying to
help somebody else tell their story with visuals,
what are some things they should keep in mind?
Probably, the biggest thing is what is the story that you're
trying to tell and then who are you trying to tell it to.
And if you don't know what the story is,
you're never going to be able to make a visual
that's going to clearly communicate something.
And if you don't know the background of the people that you're trying to tell it to,
you're either going to aim really high,
you're going to aim really low,
you're not going to hit that sweet spot of getting the information that's
really important in your visual out to the people so they can understand it.
So, when you say, what's the story that you're
trying to tell with the data, what do you mean by that?
I mean, if you're going to be giving a presentation that's going to involve some data,
you're probably trying to make some sort of point.
And when you're trying to make that point,
to me that means that you've got a story that you're trying to tell.
You have a goal, what is the point you're trying to get across.
And if you don't know what that goal is, you don't know the point.
You don't know how you're going to get to that point.
You don't have a story that you're telling.
What are some of the common errors that you see in price and quite a few,
some of the common errors that you see when people are trying to visualize a data,
and it is just not working?
Some of the big things I see are not thinking about the medium that they're using.
So, I've created a presentation,
and the text is just way too small for people to read or the colors aren't intuitive.
It's just sort of basic visual design challenges.
That's probably the first thing that I see quite a bit of.
The second thing that I see a lot of in presentations is just
not thinking about what the background is if people going into reading the image.
So, for instance, I put up a slide.
It's got a map. It's just so great, well-designed map.
It's the best map you've ever seen.
And I'm pointing at it and saying,
"Clearly, you can see the problem that we have with this data."
And I'm not thinking about the fact that I just spent six months,
a year, 10 years working on this data set,
and I know it really well.
Now I just shown it to an audience that does not have that background,
and I'm telling them, "Well, it's obvious that you're seeing this."
And it really isn't obvious what they're seeing.
And when all watch presentations and they'll drop in a graphic, I can look at it and go.
That's, you clearly felt the need to put in a graphic.
You didn't think about what graphic needed to go there.
So that's just, I don't like,
get that away from me.
But then, other times when you'll see people who really
integrated what they want
to be able to show with the image or the graphic that's able to do it,
you're like, "Oh, you've got good judgment on that."
I really don't know how to sort of get people to the point where they know what image.
They've got that judgment. So they know what image to be able to drop in.
Yeah. I think that's really,
really of value and judgment sort of thing.
I mean, I'm sort of a compulsive graphic packrat.
So, I start to collect a lot of things and organize them.
I have now a folder called bad maps.
So, if I want something that's just sort of an example to say, okay,
when you talk about what not to do,
I can just kind of go to my little selection to harvest from.
But in terms of like finding good visuals,
and some of it is just having a good collection to go to,
it's going to a lot of presentations and thinking about what do you like,
what do you dislike, and thinking about what really compliments your style.
I'm sort of a mix of words and graphics.
I don't think I've ever given a presentation.
Even being a cartographer,
I've never given a presentation that is entirely visual maps,
and that's just because I feel like, oftentimes,
the words really compliment,
and I'm not afraid to have a slide that is entirely words.
How much of that you're storing it in files?
How much of that is work that you've created?
How much of that is images that you find that you just like?
And then, how much are you dealing with copyright concerns?
So, probably about, I'm going to say 80,
90 percent are things that I find,
things I find in newspapers,
examples of maps in various places.
And I imagine if I were doing presentations that were public presentations,
there would be copyright concerns.
If I'm doing something interior to the company,
I don't feel as concerned about that.
I always have attribution of where things came from.
But, for instance, when I'm talking at our customer conference,
because those are slides that are recorded and distributed to the public,
I do not use any of that material.
I might reference some examples,
the talk about challenges that I've seen with
graphics that are being created in popular media.
But unless I had permission from New York Times or whoever, I wouldn't use them.
So, talk about how you're using slides or what you feel is unique about using slides in
a corporate situation as opposed to
like again a TED talk situation or an academic situation.
So, I actually find a lot of similarities
between what I did in academic settings and what I
do in corporate setting because of the archiving of
the material and the frequency with which people go back to look at things.
So, I might give a presentation to 10 people
on something that might be a feature that we're developing.
And people will go back and look at
those slides to use the missed reference in other documents that are being created,
but they're not going to be able to see the presentation live.
In my mind, that's very similar to the students who
want to bring the slides back up because they're studying for an exam,
or two semesters later, they're like, "Oh,
I remember we had this lecture where we talked about X."
And that's really relevant to this other topic in a class,
and they want to be able to use them almost like opening up
a chapter in a book where it becomes the reference.
And so, because of those similarities in my mind,
I feel like having that balance of text and images because then people can bring up,
they can take their notes on them if they have them in advance.
All right. Well, thank you very much for your time.
Your advice is very helpful. Thanks.
Great to meet you.
Great.
