Annotated Tableau Public tutorial video: A quick start guide for instructors and first-timers

This is a 5-minute video I created for the Intro to Data Visualization open course. Instructors and beginners of Tableau can use it as a quick start guide to create interactive data visualizations.

I have found it helpful to have first-time users of Tableau create their first visualization following a short tutorial and postponing any technical questions, so as to get a quick feel of how the software works.

The demo visualization, showing state-by-state U.S. population, is an interactive dashboard of three charts and a filter. The dashboard is embedded below in this post, and can also be viewed in a larger, standalone version.

The video tutorial, underneath the visualization, shows the steps in creating the charts and dashboard, and has on-screen annotations where necessary. The video is created using Camtasia, a commercial screen recorder and video editor.

If you are interested in recreating this demo project, here’s what you need to do: download Tableau Public and install it on your computer; create a free account with Tableau Public; download a data set of U.S. population; and watch and follow steps in the video tutorial.