19/3/2019 10 Free tools to get started with Data Visualisation-Easily & Instantly.

10 Free tools to get started with Data

Visualisation-Easily & Instantly.
Jump right into the Data Visualisation process with these
easy and intuitive tools.

Parul Pandey Follow

Mar 12 · 9 min read

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19/3/2019 10 Free tools to get started with Data Visualisation-Easily & Instantly.

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Don’t simply show data, tell a story with it!

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Yes, we have data and we have insights, now what? Obviously, the next step
would be to communicate these ndings with people so that they can take
the necessary actions. One of the most e ective ways to communicate data
is through storytelling. But to be e ective storytellers, we need to simplify
things and not complicate them so that the real essence of the analysis is
not lost.

. . .

When it comes to storytelling and visualisation, there are a number of

tools to choose from. Some are freely available while others come with
paid subscriptions. Some are easy and intuitive but lack interactiveness
while some are complex and require a bit of e ort to get started.

If you are just getting started in Data Visualisation, have no experience

in art or graphic design, don’t want to code and want to start instantly
making graphs or maps, then this article is just for you. This article tries
also bring to light tools other than the popular one’s tools like Tableau
Public, PowerBI and Google Charts, which are used quite commonly in
the Data Science ecosystem.

So, here are ten freely available tools that let beginners start building
beautiful visuals immediately.

. . .

All of these data visualization tools are available for free, but may have a
premium version if you want to upgrade and access more options especially
the cloud services.

. . .

1. Data Wrapper
Datawrapper makes it easy to create charts & maps. You can create a
choropleth, symbol or a locator map with ease, just with the click of the
mouse. Similarly, you can also create a chart of your choice depending
upon your data. The charts are interactive, responsive and embeddable

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in your website. The free version of the tool which is meant for a single
user supports 10,000 monthly chart views.

Datawrapper is mainly built for journalists and by the journalists.

Newsrooms all over the world use Datawrapper to build their charts and
maps. However, it is pretty much useful for anybody, who wants
visualisations to accompany their articles. The site also hosts their blog
titled CHARTABLE, where they regularly write about the best practices
in data visualisation.

Process
Simply copy your data from Excel or Google Sheets. You can also upload
CSV les or link to an URL for live-updating charts. Choose from many
chart and map types with one click. Customize and annotate the charts
to make it more e ective. Copy the ready-to-use embed code into your
CMS or website, or export the chart as an image or PDF to print it.

Demo

. . .

2. RAWGraphs
RAWGraphs is an open web tool to create custom vector-based
visualizations on top of the amazing d3.js library.

Primarily conceived as a tool for designers and vis geeks, RAWGraphs

aims at providing a missing link between spreadsheet applications (e.g.

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Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, Google Docs) and vector graphics

editors (e.g. Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape etc).

RAWGraphs is highly customizable and extensible, accepting new

custom layouts de ned by users. For more information about how to
add or edit layouts, visit their site.

Process
RAWGraphs works with tabular data (e.g. spreadsheets and comma-
separated values) as well as with copied-and-pasted texts from other
applications (e.g. Microsoft Excel, TextWrangler, TextEdit etc). Based on
the SVG format, visualizations can be easily edited with vector graphics
applications for further re nements, or directly embedded into web
pages.

Simply insert the raw data in RawGraphs, choose within a wide range of
visual models and then tune the created chart and explore the data.

The easiest way to use RAWGraphs is by accessing the most updated

version on the o cial app page. However, RAWGraphs can also run
locally on your machine. For installation follow the instructions on their
Github repo.

Demo

. . .

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3. Charted
Charted lets you visualise data and automatically create beautiful
charts. It has been developed by the Product Science team at Medium.
Charted has been deliberately kept simple and easy to work with. It
doesn’t store, manipulate or transform data and hence it isn’t a
formatting tool. However, it has a few powerful core features:

• Rendering well on all screen sizes, including monitors

• Re-fetching the data and updating the chart every 30 minutes

• Moving data series into separate charts

• Adjusting the chart type, labels/titles, and background

Process
Provide the link to a data le and Charted returns a beautiful,
interactive, and shareable chart of the data. Currently charted
supports .csv, .tsv. google spreadsheets and dropbox share links. It is
also possible to generate an HTML code which can then be embedded to
a website.

Demo
Download the repo and run npm install to install dependencies.
After that, you will be able to run npm start . This will start a server at
localhost:3000. Alternatively, it can be tried out at charted.co too.

. . .

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4. Chart Studio
Chart Studio is Plotly’s powerful, web-based online chart creator. It is
one of the most sophisticated editors for creating D3.js and WebGL
charts. It is available as a basic version which is free to use. Additionally,
there are enterprise and cloud versions which are paid. The source code
is available for anyone to integrate into their applications.

Process
Either drag-and-drop data les or connect to SQL through the Falcon
SQL client. Then simply play with the options provided and get
interactive charts instantly.

Demo

. . .

5. Fastcharts
FastCharts is a product from the Financial Times DataViz team. They
recently soft-launched a public version of their in-house, in-browser
charting tool for people to work and provide feedback.

The tool can be used to :

• Make line, bar and area charts by simply pasting your data directly
into the browser

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• Add annotations to points and/or regions of the plot

• Download PNGs and editable SVGs

Though this tool was made for in-house use, FastCharts is also gaining a
reputation in other parts of the business as they create charts for
presentations — this is a simpler tool than Excel or Google Sheets and
provides users with a more professional looking chart with FT branding.

Process
Any data in CSV or TSV format can be used to create the chart which can
then be further customised as per the user’s preference.

Demo
Here’s a demo GIF showing how to make a chart in under a minute:

https://fastcharts.io/

. . .

6. Palladio
Palladio is a free data-driven tool designed to visualize complex
historical data with ease. The project was conceived to understand how
to design graphical interfaces based on humanistic inquiry. Palladio lies
at the intersection of History and Design.

There are four types of visualisations which can be created with

Palladio:

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• Map View: converts the coordinates data as points on a map.

• Graph View: Lets you visualise the relationships between any two
dimensions of your data

• List View: dimensions of the data can be arranged to make

customized lists.

• Gallery View: data can be displayed within a grid setting for quick
reference

Process
Any collection of information that can be represented in a
table/spreadsheet format will work with Palladio, with the only
requirement that all data is represented by delimited-separated values
including commas, semicolons and tabs.

We can either paste, upload or provide a link to the data in order to

create a new Palladio project.

Demo

. . .

7. Openheatmap

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Opeheatmap is a very simple tool that instantly turns spreadsheets into

a map. Right from mapping house prices in a neighbourhood to twitter
followers, openheatmap can turn all these into interactive visualisation
without any complexity involved.

Process
Simply upload your spreadsheet or provide a link to the google drive. If
there’s no problem in the data, you’ll be able to view your map next.
Your spreadsheet should have a column for the locations you want to
map, one for the value and optionally one for the time of each row if
you want an animated map. For example:

Sou rce: http://www.openheatmap.com/u pload.html

Demo
Let us map ‘London Underground stations’ using openheatmap.

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. . .

8. MyHeatMap
MyHeatMap is another tool that makes it possible to view geographic
data interactively. However, the free versions only allow the users to
create Public maps with a maximum of only twenty data points, which
is actually very less. Myheatmap outputs colour-coded heat maps which
are extremely easy for the target audience to understand. The maps
aren’t cluttered with markers, ags, contour lines, or growing blobs.
Also, heat maps created with myheatmap are completely interactive
with the ability to pan and zoom.

Process
The user simply needs to upload the geographic data in a CSV format.
The le should include a header row with at least three elds. Two of
the elds must be named “Latitude” and “Longitude”, and their
corresponding columns must contain geocoordinates in degrees latitude
and degrees longitude.

Demo

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. . .

9. Chartbuilder
Chartbuilder is a front-end charting application that facilitates the easy
creation of simple beautiful charts. Chartbuilder is the user and export
interface. Chartbuilder powers all chart creation on Atlas, a charting
platform developed by Quartz. Chartbuilder is not a data analysis or
data transformational tool. It simply creates charts in a consistent
prede ned style.

Process
Paste csv or tsv formatted data into chartbuilder and export the code to
draw a mobile friendly responsive chart or a static SVG or PNG chart.
For the ones who are not interested in customizing the styles of the
charts, the hosted version: http://quartz.github.io/Chartbuilder will
do, else it can also be downloaded and installed locally.

Demo

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. . .

10. Timeline.js
TimelineJS is an open-source tool that enables anyone to build visually
rich, interactive timelines. Beginners can create a timeline using nothing
more than a Google spreadsheet. Experts can use their JSON skills to
create custom installations while keeping TimelineJS’s core
functionality.

TimelineJS can pull in media from a variety of sources. Twitter, Flickr,

YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, Dailymotion, Google Maps, Wikipedia,
SoundCloud, Document Cloud and more!

Process
Creating a timeline is an easy process. A spreadsheet template is
provided which needs to be lled in and then simply publish the
content. The generated link can then be embedded in Medium or on any
website at a point where the timeline is desired. The site has a good
introductory video to get started with Timeline JS.

Demo
An example of how the Timeline will be rendered in a Medium
Blog/Website.

Mandela: A Life of Purpose

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TimelineJS Embed

TimelineJS Embedcdn.knightlab.com

. . .

Conclusion
Data visualization doesn’t have to be di cult or expensive. Coding
de nitely gives you more options to create and customise the graphs
especially when the data is messy, but these tools can provide good
options when it comes to instant data visualisations. This is not an
exhaustive list and I am always on the lookout for more tools that try to
simplify the visualisations process for others.

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