A Collaborative Blog on Collaborative Vizzes
If you’ve ever wanted to do a collaborative viz but wasn’t sure whether or not to pull the trigger, this is the blog for you! I write a little about my experience with collabs overall, talk with CJ about our recent viz together, and interview two other groups who have put out collaborations in the past.
My Start with Collabs
I remember once in the summer struggling on a viz. I told a [non-data] friend that I was frustrated and close to giving up. They said something I’ll never forget, “Is there anyone you can ask for help?”. Why doesn’t that occur to me more often? I have a really hard time reaching out and leaning on others and this was no different when I entered the data community, through no fault of the people in it. I had only ever been met with grace and generosity through all of my interactions. I eventually became more comfortable, asked people for feedback, shared ideas for input. Collaborations felt like a natural extension of that. I had thought about them before but felt so hesitant about even broaching the idea. I didn’t want to bother people, I was worried they say no, and I didn’t want to let them down.
Michelle really is like my guardian angel, isn’t she? Not only my introduction to the datafam but she approached me about doing something in the community for the holidays. And I was excited as this was something I had been considering already but wasn’t sure I wanted to take on. Working with her was easy and we launched the Datafam Card Exchange. That was all the encouragement I needed! Not long after I got my idea for the design video series watching Newsies (unrelated). I knew my top choices were Lindsay, Kevin, and Sam. Thought they’d all say no but wanted to try anyway. They all said yes? They all said yes with enthusiasm. They all said yes with enthusiasm and added such wonderful ideas. Then came my partnership with Eve on Diversity in Data, Datafam Bingo with Eric, and my first full viz collab with CJ.
All of those collaborations have taught me something different about working with others! And they all manifested in quite different ways as well. From community events to an initiative to a teaching opportunity to a dashboard, each one was special in its own way. And in addition to benefitting from hearing the ideas of others, I also became more confident in my own ideas and presence in the community through these collaborations.
Because of that, I wanted to write this blog for anyone who may feel the way I did. Thinking about the idea of working with others but hesitant to do so. To help people who haven’t done a collaborative viz find out more about the process, I interviewed two pairs who have launched successful collaborative vizzes in the past about their experience, which you can find below. Additionally, CJ and I filmed a discussion about our recent collab highlighting women in data.
CJ & Autumn: Women in Data
To celebrate International Women’s Day, CJ and I put out a viz highlighting one hundred inspirational women in the data community. Watch the video below to hear more about our experience working on this project together, bloopers included.
Priya & Ghafar The Matrix Franchise
In February of 2021, Priya and Ghafar put out a viz together on The Matrix Franchise. I love both of their work individually and follow them closely. But I also have a special place in my heart for vizzes on pop culture so this ticked that box for me as well. Below they answer a few questions on their experience working on that project together.
What came first, realizing that you both loved the Matrix or wanting to do a collab? How did you approach the topic?
Priya: I remember us chatting about The Matrix early on in our friendship and discovered we were both big fans! It’s one of my all-time favourite movies and I had always wanted to make a viz, but it was on my long list of viz ideas for a while.
We knew we wanted to collab at some point, as we had never done it before. As it was a goal for this year, it made sense to pair up and do it together! We spent some time throwing ideas at each other until one finally stuck. We finally narrowed it down to movies and TV shows, and with the new Matrix 4 movie coming out, creating a viz all about The Matrix sounded perfect!
Once we decided on the topic, we had to find the data and then figure out what our story would be. Ghafar was able to find a lot of interesting data about survey results for how popular the movies were for different audiences, as well as box office data and overall ratings. Our ideas were finally coming together and it was super exciting!
Ghafar: We love The Matrix! It is definitely our favorite franchise. We’re both really into Sci-fi / action films but never actually thought about turning it into an idea for a collab viz.
During Christmas holidays, Priya and I started talking about working on a potential viz together. We honestly had no clue what we wanted to create. There were so many topics and we spent a huge amount of time researching them online. From healthcare, sport, finance, crime, weather, food, and even travel data. There was just so much out there and settling on one idea was really hard. Eventually, our list of ideas kept growing but we still wanted to try something different. We then started talking about the new Matrix 4 film and it’s like a light bulb just turned on. Literally at the same time, we said “Let’s create a cool viz on The Matrix!”. OK, fine. It wasn’t at the same time but we did love The Matrix franchise and were very passionate about this topic for our first collaboration viz.
At this point, Priya and I had The Matrix idea in mind but we had to find data. I have to admit that finding the datasets was very frustrating. We knew there was box office data out there for each of the three Matrix films but we also discussed how awesome it would be to add more to our analysis. We saw online that there were YouGov surveys out there on what folks thought about The Matrix film and how popular it was among gender and age groups. This was a really cool demographic analysis and right away we knew this would be great information and an interesting story. On top of that, we wanted to see what the popularity search trend looked like for Matrix 4 as WarnerBros had recently announced releasing a few of their films at once on HBO Max. We honestly cannot wait for Matrix 4 to release soon!
Everyone has different approaches to viz design and creation. Did you find you two have similar styles? If not, what was different about this process for you?
Priya: We both love a dark background, so that combined with The Matrix was a no-brainer! I used Figma for all of the design and would send Ghafar screenshots of how I mapped things out to see what he thought. We first tried to do a wide-form dashboard as it was a new layout style for both of us, and we have always loved seeing people in the community experiment with this type of design. I found it really tricky trying to get everything to fit and to work how I wanted, so in the end we defaulted back to our trusty long-form format!
early design stages (wide-form)
I feel like both of our styles meshed really well together. It was a constant stream of giving feedback and running things by each other, as well as discussing what we thought would be best for the viz. Our approaches were quite similar in that, we figured out our design after a lot of tweaking and trial and error, then were able to just place our charts on top.
I remember the first week was the hardest, because we tried and failed with the wide-form idea and we weren’t sure what to do next. Then all of a sudden in the second week, everything started falling into place extremely quickly until it was finally complete! I think having that constant communication and sending images back and forth for feedback really helped, as it meant that things could be adjusted accordingly and it would be ready for when we brought the charts in. I definitely like to work backwards with my personal projects and figure out the design first, so it was great that Ghafar works in that way, too!
Ghafar: We definitely felt like our viz designs were similar. Priya and I love using dark backgrounds for our vizzes so it was a no-brainer to use our design styles for our Matrix dashboard. Once we found our data sets and had a clear dashboard vision, Priya did an incredible job mocking up a template of our dashboard layout in Figma. We would constantly go back and forth about color choices, chart selections, and our storytelling context.
The really challenging part was starting out with a wide-form viz. On Tableau Public, you’ll notice a lot of our vizzes are long-form. So a wide-form layout was way outside our comfort zone. At the time, we really thought a wide-form layout would be great since neither of us have done it before. Priya and I talked it over and we both realized it wasn’t what we wanted to do for a Matrix viz. We really do work backwards so it was awesome to have had a collab partner that worked in a similar way.
What’s your favorite quality about your collab partner and how did it help with this viz?
Priya: Ghafar is very hard-working! He would say something would be done by the weekend, but he would be so engrossed in it and would finish the task that very night. We also spent so long discussing aspects of the viz together and he was always ready to get stuck right in. It was seriously so much fun working with him as he is extremely passionate about making visualisations, and it just made it that much more enjoyable. Working with someone who is excited about something as much as you is an amazing experience, and I am very happy that my first collaboration viz was with him!
Ghafar: It took a lot of time, planning and perseverance to launch our first collaboration viz and Priya with no doubt is very dependable, enthusiastic, and driven. Literally right after we agreed on creating The Matrix viz, she started sketching out the designs in Figma. I can’t remember how many design iterations she shared with me because there were so many! Priya wanted this first collab viz to be awesome and I loved working with someone who was so passionate about our project. Her passion and diligence is very inspiring and I would absolutely work on another collab viz with Priya again.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give to people looking to do a collab?
Priya: Communicate! I really think communicating regularly and giving each other feedback is essential, as well as being open to feedback and discussing ideas freely. Another important part of that is setting deadlines and knowing when certain tasks will be complete. If anything gets in the way or schedules change, then also being transparent about that, too. The sooner any setbacks are known about, the quicker they can be resolved. It’s all about teamwork and you’re in this together - you both want this viz to be the best it can be!
Ghafar: I completely echo what Priya said. Communication is key to success! I mean, how can we build something great when we’re not sharing ideas or giving and receiving feedback? Our chat history on Twitter literally exploded with conversations around potential dashboard layouts, colors, analysis and chart selections. When one of us thought something didn’t look right on our dashboard, we immediately called it out. It really does come down to a stellar team effort and I can say for the both of us that we were a phenomenally hardworking and communicative team.
Soha & Fred: The Day Lebanon Changed
Following the explosion in Beirut last Summer, Soha and Fred put out a viz together covering the information surrounding the event. In addition to presenting the data on an important subject, I found their design to be both impactful as well as mindful and inclusive and is still one of my favorite vizzes to this day. Below they answer a few questions on their experience working on that project together.
How did your collaborative viz begin? Did one of you have the idea and approach the other or did you think it would be fun to do a viz together and then you came up with the topic?
Soha: Fred had the idea about the topic of the viz and approached me about it, I thought it was a brilliant idea and was excited to join him in this project.
Fred: After a few weeks from the Beirut explosion, there was very little news in the western media about this devastating incident. I had a few ideas on doing a visualisation to show the magnitude of this horrific event, but couldn’t settle on a single one. Therefore, I reached out to Soha, as I always liked her storytelling approach, and knew she would be keen to work on such a project.
What do you think makes for a good viz partner?
Soha: Working together regardless of what you’re doing, it always comes down to having mutual respect for each other, actively listening to each other's ideas and exploring things till both partners are happy with the end result.
Fred: A good viz partner is someone who’s creative and can provide a different perspective to you, so you can learn from each other. More importantly it is someone who communicates well, as both partners need to be aligned on the outcome.
If you could change anything about how you guys approached the process, what would it be and why?
Soha: This is a hard question, I don’t think there would be anything I would change. Tableau made collaboration a bit harder in terms of more than one person couldn’t work on the same section of viz at the same time because you had to upload your changes, then download your partners changes. The 10+hrs time difference between Fred and I made things a bit complicated but we managed and if one person was busy that day, that was also communicated. Finally, Both of us researched the topic really well and we weren’t just looking at the data, we were also keeping up to date with the news and were very aware of the importance and ethical implications behind our topic.
Fred: As Soha mentioned, the biggest challenge in our collaboration (besides the huge time difference) was not being able to work on the same dashboard! We spent too much time working on different versions, but we quickly found a system, every time Soha or I update something with the visualisation, we sent a twitter message with a screenshot of the changes with the twbx file, along with a description on what has been updated.
Why would you recommend collaborating with other people in the community? Unless you wouldn’t recommend it, then definitely put that reason here also.
Soha: I would definitely recommend it, it was such a great learning experience. I personally learnt so much from Fred and got tips from him that I didn’t know before, it was also a really fun experience bouncing ideas off each other. I’m not used to that, because I worked independently in my previous role as a consultant and in my current role now.
Fred: Of course, do it! Collaborating is one of the best learning opportunities you would get, no matter the results. During this project, I learnt lots of new things from Soha’s approach, that I never considered previously. We were both challenged with the topic and the data, but we managed to give it our best and the result was satisfying.
Final Thoughts
So there you have it. I think I can speak for everyone when I say we all had wonderful experiences in our collaborations, we all respect, appreciate, and learned from our partners, we all recommend you try out a collaborative viz, and we all, certainly, would do it again. I hope this gives you the motivation you need to reach out to someone and collab and I can’t wait to see what you make!
Author’s note: an alternative title for this blog was ‘Find You A Viz Partner on the Other Side of the World’ because across all three collabs the partners lived in different continents. So maybe find someone down under or across the pond when you’re looking too!
