Data Visualisation Tool Comparison 2020
As a professional visualisation and data science consultancy, we often get asked for empirical evidence on the quality and ease of use of different visualisation tools.
There are a number of market research reports that evaluate products, but these are very often to do with strategic purpose, rather than the practical ability to load data, design visualisations and hand over for production purposes.
Very often, our clients ask for work to complement their own in-house skills, so the practical ability and skill-set of the developers and organisational fit is also a consideration in the tool set.
We have therefore completed a “practical” tool evaluation, by getting a data analyst to attempt to load and visualise two complex data sets (one a static complex nested structure using a variety of data types; one a large time series set) in each of the tools.
We chose one analyst who hadn’t used any but one these tools before (so for that purpose, the analyst watched another staff member who hadn’t use the tool perform the same tasks).
This has given us a practical review of a number of visualisation tools, rather than just a thematic review from already expert users.