Tableau Default Formatting Redesign
Highlights
-New Tableau font designed by Tobias Frere-Jones.
-Better hierarchy to distinguish between labels and titles.
-Muted lines, tick marks, and axis labels to let the data shine.
-Removed border around single visualizations.
-New color palettes: Superfishel Stone, a color palette I designed with Maureen Stone, is the palette shown below. More info.
Challenges
-Designing for thousands of users with small to medium to large data sets.
-People do crazy stuff in Tableau so whatever you design will not look good for everyone.
-Rules needed to apply to multiple visualization types.
-Individual visualizations are normally combined into a dashboard where space is tight--had to balance the desire for white space but be efficient with space.
-Was going for a minimal and zen-like aesthetic, but it also had to be legible on a wide variety of monitors and browsers for users of all demographics.
-Added space in between cells. [did not make it into the release]
-Empty cells are 50% transparent so that they stand out. [did not make it into the release]
-Zero lines are dotted so that they are not confused with edge of pane (which is not an issue if there is space between cells).
-Axis title is not repeated under each cell--instead it's displayed one time on each axis. [did not make it into the release]
--X axis is centered at the bottom.
--Y axis is displayed at the top, like a column header.
-Abbreviate default number formatting when there is less space (5K instead of 5,000). [did not make it into the release]
-Line thickness to show level of hierarchy in treemaps.
-Label style to show level of hierarchy. [did not make it into the release]
Mark shape matches the legend shape. [did not make it into the release]
Gridlines only display on quantitative axis.
