Observable blog

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Data Transformation

Five ways to effectively use animation in data visualization

by Robert Kosara and Allison Horst

Animation can be a distraction in data visualization. Or, when applied effectively, it can enhance user engagement, reveal trends, and help viewers track patterns across metrics. Here are five ways to use animation for better data viz.

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Product

Announcing embedded analytics

by Chris Cooning

Bring rich, interactive visualizations to your app with Observable’s embedded analytics. Powered by baked data architecture, they deliver instant, scalable performance. Integrate easily with vanilla JavaScript modules while maintaining secure, personalized data experiences at scale.

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Community

Ben Welsh nerds out about building better data pipelines for data journalism

by Allison Horst

Ben Welsh, award winning data journalist and news applications editor at Reuters, shares how he’s building automated data pipelines to help journalists put their energy where it matters most.

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Data Workflow

Why to never crop the y-axis, part 2: how to do it, and what to do instead

by Robert Kosara

Truncating the vertical axis in a bar chart is still a bad idea, but in this follow-up post we look at how to do it in a visualization grammar like Observable Plot. We also discuss alternatives, such as the relative bar chart, and show a similar issue when using size encodings in scatterplots and on maps.

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Community

Behind the scenes of the ActBlue Ticker Tracker with Ryan Murphy

by Allison Horst and Chris Cooning

Developer Ryan Murphy shares a behind the scenes look into the motivation for, implementation of, and insights from his popular ActBlue Ticker Tracker dashboard.

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Data Transformation

It’s never okay to crop the y-axis, except when it is

by Robert Kosara

A common rule of creating charts says to never cut off the y-axis for bar charts, but that it can start at any point for line charts. Research shows that cropping the y-axis leads to confusion, even with line charts. There is a useful rule of thumb that helps make this choice, though.

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Product

Five techniques to improve chart annotations

by Fil Rivière and Allison Horst

Observable Data Visualization Engineer Fil Rivière shares five useful patterns for better chart annotations including pointer-driven marks, continuous crosshairs, staggered axes, and grouped tips — all with examples implemented in Observable Plot.

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Data Transformation

Deliver big insights in small spaces

by Allison Horst

Learn chart types and strategies to design rich data visualizations that let viewers dig deeper into the data, even in small spaces.

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Data Transformation

How to build successful user-facing data apps

by Robert Kosara

User-facing data apps are different from traditional internal-facing BI dashboards, both in terms of their users and their use cases. In this post, we discuss these differences and present strategies for creating successful data apps for users external to your organization.

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Product

Announcing Observable Cloud

by Mike Bostock

Observable Cloud is the fastest data app hosting, with secure sharing and integrated analytics, all fully automated for continuous deployment.

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Product

Unheralded essentials of Framework data apps: an overview for data teams

by Allison Horst

For data teams and analysts that are new to building data apps with Observable Framework, we share eight unheralded (but essential) things to know as you dive in.

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