Chevron Left
Back to Essential Design Principles for Tableau

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Essential Design Principles for Tableau by University of California, Davis

4.4
stars
2,010 ratings

About the Course

In this course, you will analyze and apply essential design principles to your Tableau visualizations. This course assumes you understand the tools within Tableau and have some knowledge of the fundamental concepts of data visualization. You will define and examine the similarities and differences of exploratory and explanatory analysis as well as begin to ask the right questions about what’s needed in a visualization. You will assess how data and design work together, including how to choose the appropriate visual representation for your data, and the difference between effective and ineffective visuals. You will apply effective best practice design principles to your data visualizations and be able to illustrate examples of strategic use of contrast to highlight important elements. You will evaluate pre-attentive attributes and why they are important in visualizations. You will exam the importance of using the "right" amount of color and in the right place and be able to apply design principles to de-clutter your data visualization....

Top reviews

SL

Jun 1, 2020

This course really changed my perspective in how to create visualization not just using Tableau but in every visualization application. I'm very happy I could take it and learned from it.

JC

Apr 6, 2021

Great coverage of chart types and creating them. Step by step instruction with the "why" element helped me understand how to pursue the chart and understand why I would want to use it.

Filter by:

1 - 25 of 355 Reviews for Essential Design Principles for Tableau

By victor M

•

Aug 8, 2018

A really poor course.

I don't get how this Course is rated so high.

There is a lot of chit-chat about Colors, Principles, and the use of lines. But Tableau contents are scarce and just scratched.

Don't be fooled with the "Tableau" word. Tableau is just anecdotal here. There is a whole week where Tableau is not even shown during this course! Run away.

Rename "Essential Design Principles for Tableau" to "Essential Design Principles" and the course would be fit much better.

For those thinking about the Specialization:

I'm doing the Specialization "Data Visualization with Tableau" and contents through the courses are soooo repetitive. First two courses done from 5 up to now. My review: If you sum all the videos, just barely 2 weeks, or even less, (from 8 weeks) are talking about Tableau! A Joke. Hands on? 4 times in 2 courses, and say thank you.

The other 6 weeks repeats again and again how to use Colors, how to be Ethical with graphs, and several theoretical principles about how your Brain works. Cool for 1 week, but they have filled 7 weeks of such artifacts, repeating once and again the same videos from different povs. Again and again. Again and again. Sounds repetitive? Again and again. Even using same slides.

I'm not here to teach me about "perception", "colors", and "3d charts sucks for 2D charts", or better said...it would be cool if you tell me ONCE. Not in each course, forgetting about why we're here: Tableau.

Feel free to jump the first two courses. I bet they will repeat again the unique decent videos in the 3,4,and 5th course of the specialization.

Shame...

By Gil Y

•

Oct 23, 2017

Not sure I would recommend this course. The course doesn't walk you through an example of how to meet and complete the requirements of the peer graded assignment. I got a notice that I needed to redo the peer assignment, but no feedback was given as to what I needed to be corrected in order to resubmit. I've also been looking for some sort of practical application video to show me how to actually use Tableau. Whenever I submit some feedback, I can never get a response from anybody. Is this course actually being facilitated by the instructor? HELP!!!!! I'm asking for help and assistance!!!

By David R

•

Jul 15, 2018

Mostly irrelevant theory and virtually no hands on use of Tableau. Curriculum is weak, doesn't walk you through how to do enough in Tableau.

By Bruno F

•

Jan 5, 2018

The material is not encapsuled on the course and the use of only peers evaluation on practical exercises.

By Florian B

•

Jun 14, 2020

I came here to learn how to use Tableau. This course didn't teach me much in Tableau - instead, it was packed with design theory that isn't very useful in practice.

By Van L

•

Mar 11, 2018

The course uncovers the science of the design for data. It is certainly very helpful for my job where have to present a lot of data in different perspectives for senior management.

By Thanh N N

•

May 19, 2019

The course is not only focusing on the Tableau project, but also discussing key notes that need applying to make visualization become more effective. That is great course! Thanks!

By Svetlana C

•

Sep 7, 2020

I'm disappointed with the course. I'm sure there are a lot of theories to be tackled with data viz, however, this course is too long and too repetitive for me. I think a lot of the topics can be condensed in two weeks only. Moreover, demo videos is difficult to follow in terms of audio and video matching together and the explanation itself. I was struggling to figure out why it should be done like that, how to do it, and how can we use it in the future. For someone who is working and doing this specialization, course 2 is too dragging for me and I felt that I wasted a lot of my time.

By Prudha J

•

Aug 1, 2019

This was a great course, it had lots of information on design principle which not only helps for people working on Tableau but any other presentation tools

By Yichi Z

•

Aug 21, 2018

The materials involving Tableau are simple and can be completed in a short time, so no need to spend a lot of hours on watching videos and submitting discussions. Some assignments are not quite related to operating Tableau.

By Claudia G

•

Feb 8, 2019

It was a exelent course for me, I was thinking just in technology, but the topics reviewed are exelent to know, how design a presentation. It's amazing, now I can apply this knowlodege in all aspect of my work. Thank you!!!

By Sofia L

•

Jun 2, 2020

This course really changed my perspective in how to create visualization not just using Tableau but in every visualization application. I'm very happy I could take it and learned from it.

By Jacquewyn C

•

Apr 7, 2021

Great coverage of chart types and creating them. Step by step instruction with the "why" element helped me understand how to pursue the chart and understand why I would want to use it.

By Dmitry P

•

Jun 22, 2019

Great course! I enjoyed it a lot. I think I will do all in this specialization.

By Anand L

•

Jul 29, 2019

good

By Deaglan D

•

Sep 2, 2017

This course starts out really strong, but around Design Best Practices, the Govind begins to sound drunk. He slurs, exaggerates, repeats himself, and takes longer than necessary to execute tasks. This is distracting and very disappointing from UC Davis and Coursera.

By Mickey C

•

Jun 24, 2023

This was one of the most tedious courses I've taken on Coursera, and I did not learn "Design Principles for Tableau" rather this was more of a "visualization good practices" with a tiny bit of basic Tableau. The test was unfair as it asked us to remember historical details that are not important to learning data visualizations. Being aware is one thing - remembering a detail for a test that is about a skill is just not a fair request. I passed the test, but again - we didn't learn Tableau. Furthermore, during the peer grading assignment, my submission was repeatedly failed by other peer reviewers. On top of that - one of the assignments I reviewed was copied and pasted from my own, with my Tableau Public link. This course should be removed, or redesigned to limit bad peer grading and plagiarism. Also, take into account your own lessons on clutter and cognitive load.

By Nicoletta P

•

Aug 28, 2020

Very basic course about visualization best practices, more focus on the psychology of visualizations than on Tableau. Since it's less detailed than course 1 in the specialization, it should be put as an introductory course and summarized.

In addition the few Tableau examples in the course are:

> inconsistent: Week 3 videos on Superstore Dataset should be shown before Week 2 videos, since in Week 2 videos you need to use a calculated field (Profit Ratio), but the explanation on how to create it is in Week 3

> not well explained: in Week 3 a few new interesting Tableau concepts are introduced (e.g., parameter, calculated fields, control charts...), however the explanation is very fast and you can hardly follow what the teacher is doing. You end up copy pasting formulas, while nobody explains you why that is the right formula

By Kristina M

•

May 8, 2021

Class 2 of 5 in the Specialization was repetitive, of itself and the first course, and was very high level. While the exposure to the tool and accompanying online communities was interesting, fun, and good Tableau practice, Courses 1 and 2 could be covered in 1 week; at times it felt like a Tableau infomercial. We never dug deeper than what Tableau does- no examples or practice on how to use it. This course doesn't stand up to the quality of content and teaching in other coursera courses I've taken including 'Learn SQL Basics for Data Science Specialization' and 'Excel Skills for Data Analytics and Visualization' - I highly recommend these courses. Based on reviews for the 3rd Tableau class I will not be continuing with the Tableau Specialization.

By Priyanka J

•

Sep 9, 2021

I have completed all my assignments before the deadline. However, I didn't get two certificates of the assignments which I have already done in August. If I want two certificates then I have to pay Rs 3500 for that certificates. I will never recommend this course to anyone and will not do any certification from Coursera again.

By Rohit B

•

Apr 30, 2020

Very good second course in the series. It may not give the Tableau skills that you were hoping for - The third course in the series definitely does. But definitely worth the effort completing it, as you learn some really interesting visual cognition fundamentals - The 6 Gestalt principles for example are extremely useful. They seem fairly obvious, but there is a lot more depth to them the more you think about it.

Slightly marred my experience with some extremely unfriendly peer reviewers - Failing me in the course for no particular reason during my the first submission because I did a lot more work than expected (hello?). I nonetheless resubmitted the assignment and got the certificate now. Unfortunately, this is unavoidable in peer graded courses and no negative feedback to the course itself which remains excellent.

By A

•

Mar 11, 2018

The course content is very good and the course creators have put in lots of efforts.

**Request**

Since number of enrolled students may vary, "peer review" type questions makes it difficult to get a grade. Even if you've submitted your assignments, if there is no one to review your work, you don't get a grade. This is disappointing and very discouraging.

I request the course creators to consider this and try to make the tests such that learners can complete the course on their own. I believe this would motivate students to complete the specialization.

By HM W

•

Feb 2, 2021

I found this course to be very helpful in my pursuit to gain data visualization skills. I am planning to explore some of the topics in greater depth. My only negative critique would be that the "how to" sections were using a substantially older version of Tableau, and some of the features required a little digging to find as they had changed during upgrades. If it's possible to make updated videos with a newer version, that could be very helpful to students.

By Eddy C

•

Feb 9, 2017

I enjoyed the course as it highlights many strategies and insights into making effective visualizations. It makes good use to Tableau and gives practical examples. The only thing I would like to see added is a simple instruction manual to accomplish some of the methods they employed. Overall I think it was great to have this as a second course in the series because it lays the foundation for good design practices.

By Lisa T

•

Mar 9, 2023

I learned a lot on this course even as somone who's been in marketing and communications for some years. The only problem with this course is that it's obvious that people don't read the assignment requirements, and those same people then grading your assignment. This is a problem exists for all Coursera courses with peer=-graded assignments, but a bigger problem for these courses given data is about the details.