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RAWGraphs: missing link between spreadsheets and data visualization

rawgraphs.io

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Re: RAWGraphs: missing link between spreadsheets and data visualization

#21

Post by cdrini »

almostdigital wrote: post #15

I really wanted to like this, I've tried it several times but always end up with either having to pre-process my data to fit whatever vis I'm trying to create or just simply not being able to do it. I recommend https://observablehq.com , once you get a hang of it and have a couple of templates setup for your workflows it's similar effort of this and you have a lot more flexibility.

I think this is by design. The idea is you bring your data in the expected format (using spreadsheets, or pivot tables, or observable, or pandas), and RAWGraphs will make one of a few common modern visualisations. The sort of stuff you would hope Excel/etc. will have out of the box someday.

Observable is definitely more of a power house :) Out of curiosity, do you have any templates you'd be willing to share?

Re: RAWGraphs: missing link between spreadsheets and data visualization

#22

Post by cdrini »

simonw wrote: post #12

This tool uses the "drag and drop columns into the graph editor" pattern, which I've seen in a few other places too - Kibana Lens most recently: https://www.elastic.co/kibana/kibana-lens I have to admit this interface doesn't really fit the way I think about charts. I'm interested in alternative UI designs for this kind of charting tool that don't use drag-and-drop - anyone seen any good ones?

I've always loved this UI. I think of visualisations as data dimension bound to visual dimensions (eg x position, y position, z position, colour, size, group, etc). So dragging the data dimension to the corresponding visual dimension afforded by the visualization maps perfectly with my mental model. How do you think of visualisations? Do you have an example of a UI that better matches your mental model?

One really really cool option I've seen is this research project called Aprtus: http://aprt.us/ . It creates this cool two-way binding between the properties of the visual elements and your data; supports recursive rendering/composition; etc. It's a little hard to explain, but the video in their homepage is worth a watch. That's probably my most ideal visualisations UX; easy to use, whilst still making it easy to use code to make complicated visualisations.

Re: RAWGraphs: missing link between spreadsheets and data visualization

#23

Post by zaptheimpaler »

My current setup is a postgres db and jupyter instance running on docker. Data visualization is easy enough with seaborn/matplotlib/pandas plotting.

I would love to see a better tool for this but its hard to beat running your own. There is no vendor lock in, no subscription fee, no uploading large datasets, no privacy issues on private data, no "gotcha" moment when the tool can't produce quite the visualization you're looking for.

Re: RAWGraphs: missing link between spreadsheets and data visualization

#28

Post by almostdigital »

cdrini wrote: post #21
almostdigital wrote: post #15

I really wanted to like this, I've tried it several times but always end up with either having to pre-process my data to fit whatever vis I'm trying to create or just simply not being able to do it. I recommend https://observablehq.com , once you get a hang of it and have a couple of templates setup for your workflows it's similar effort of this and you have a lot more flexibility.

I think this is by design. The idea is you bring your data in the expected format (using spreadsheets, or pivot tables, or observable, or pandas), and RAWGraphs will make one of a few common modern visualisations. The sort of stuff you would hope Excel/etc. will have out of the box someday. Observable is definitely more of a power house :) Out of curiosity, do you have any templates you'd be willing to share?

Not really :) But it's mostly variants of stuff you can find on https://observablehq.com/@d3/gallery

Re: RAWGraphs: missing link between spreadsheets and data visualization

#29

Post by jamesjuicy55 »

simonw wrote: post #12

This tool uses the "drag and drop columns into the graph editor" pattern, which I've seen in a few other places too - Kibana Lens most recently: https://www.elastic.co/kibana/kibana-lens I have to admit this interface doesn't really fit the way I think about charts. I'm interested in alternative UI designs for this kind of charting tool that don't use drag-and-drop - anyone seen any good ones?

Power bi and Tableau offer a number of ways to transform data including python and R. There are a ton of plug-ins out there for custom d3 graphs or even using matplotlib right inside power bi. Check out "the charticulator."

I've also been using Google data studio and it is great and offers tons of way to connect to data and refresh for free!

Re: RAWGraphs: missing link between spreadsheets and data visualization

#30

Post by OliverM »

I built a whole startup, GetBulb (still kind of up at https://getbulb.com) that pretty much did exactly this, but aimed more exclusively at Excel/spreadsheet users. This was around 2014. We received some investment but the market seemed to want consultancy work for custom visualisation over a set of templates that needed users to have some judgement on what template best suited their data.
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