This summer while beta testing Tableau v10 I was very curious about the new mark sizing feature. Bora Beran did a new feature video during the beta showing a Marimekko chart aka mosaic plot. There have been a few posts on building Marimekko charts in the past by Joe Mako, Rob Austin, and a not-quite-a-Marimekko in an old Tableau KB article, but the two charts required extra data prep and the KB article wasn’t really a Marimekko, so I was really interested in what Tableau v10 could do.
I asked Bora for the workbook and he graciously sent it to me. (Thanks, Bora!) I found a problematic calculation, in particular a use of the undocumented At the Level feature that could return nonsensical results if the data was sparse. I rewrote the calculation, sent it back to Bora, and he came back asking if I’d like to write a blog post on the subject. (Thanks, Bora.) There are two lessons I learned from this: 1) the Tableau devs are happy to help users learn more about the new features, and 2) if a user helps them back they will ask for more. Caveat emptor!
Over the course of the next few weeks I did a lot of research, created a workbook with several dashboards & dozens of worksheets, arranged for Anya A’Hearn to sprinkle some of her brilliant design glitter and learned some new tricks, and wrote (and rewrote) 30+ pages (!) of documentation including screenshots. Martha Kang at Tableau made some edits and split it into 3 parts plus a bonus troubleshooting document and they’ve been posted this week, here are the links:
- Part 1: An Introduction to Marimekko, a Chart of Many Colors and Many Names
- Part 2: How to Build a Marimekko Chart in Tableau
- Part 2.5: Troubleshooting Marimekkos
- Part 3: Link coming today
- Marimekko workbook on Tableau Public
On Gender and Color
As part of the design process Anya and I had some conversations about how to color the marks. The data set I used for the Marimekko tutorial is the UC Berkeley 1973 graduate admissions data that was used to counter claims of gender bias in admissions so gender is a key dimension in the data and I didn’t want to use the common blue/pink scheme for male/female. It’s a recent historical development and as a father I want my daughter to have a full range of opportunities in life including access to more than just the pale red end of the color spectrum in her clothes, tools, and toys. Anya and I shared some ideas back and forth and eventually Anya landed on using a color scheme from a Marimekko print she found online.
Anya is going into more detail on the process in her Women in Data SF talk on Designing Effective Visualizations on Saturday 27 August from 10am-12:30pm Pacific, here’s the live presentation info and the virtual session info. It’s going to be a blast so check it out!
So that’s how I spent my summer vacation. Can’t wait for next year!