Visualising Data On The Go
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See, Touch, Understand
Vizable is a free app that turns your data into beautiful, interactive graphs. If you have a tablet, data, and questions, Vizable is for you.
I have heard many times that data is the new world currency, and the web is the exchange bureau where that currency is traded. We are constantly immerse in data; it’s everywhere from labels on food packaging design to World Health Organisation reports. Everything’s about data and has has become increasingly easier to show that data or to tell stories with data with the existing tools in the market.
One of the best ways to get your message across is to use a visualisation to quickly draw attention to the key messages, and by presenting data visually, you also possibly uncover surprising patterns and observations that wouldn’t be apparent from looking at stats or numbers alone. It is also easy to visualise your data when you are in your working space, in a comfortable chair in front of your computer but, what happens when you are on the go, when you are mobile?
That’s when Vizable comes to the rescue, a free iPad app created by Tableau that puts sophisticated analytics capabilitiesat users’ fingertips.
“We realized that if we were going to start Tableau over again today, for the mobile generation, we’d build it for touch and on a mobile device,” said Dave Story, Tableau’s vice president for mobile and strategic growth.
Vizable’s interface is simple by design, it automatically reads the user’s spreadsheet or .csv file and figures out what the key categories are. Next, it presents the user with an initial graphical view of the data.
“Vizable is always answering a question, whether you’ve asked one yet or not,” Story said. “There’s never a blank canvas — you start with an answer, and that makes it more approachable for people.”
You can simply explore your data using gestures such as pinching, swiping and dragging. A built-in animation engine can show you how each manipulation causes the next result. It’s simple, easy to use and as Dave Story would say: “It’s magical”
This week on Monday, Mark and I were not in the office, in fact, we spent most of the morning in a train station and on a train. We both like Mondays because of Makeover Monday, a social weekly data project run by Andy Kriebel and Eva Murray. Every Monday, we both discuss that week’s data set and different options and approaches to visualise it.
This week was no exception and that’s when Vizable came to the rescue. Traveling on a high speed train, I opened Vizable, connected to the data in Excel and minutes later, the three graphs below have already taken shape helping me tell my story about Andy’s American Express credit card expenditure.
Connect, pinch, swipe, drag and share … the easiest way to analyse your data on the go !
The free mobile app gives users sophisticated analytics capabilities by pinching, swiping, and dragging
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The free mobile app gives users sophisticated analytics capabilities by pinching, swiping, and dragging
By visualizing information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes, a sort of information map. And when you’re lost in information, an information map is kind of useful.
David McCandless in his TED talk
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