{"id":79883,"date":"2024-07-26T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-26T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/?p=79883"},"modified":"2025-03-27T17:25:57","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T00:25:57","slug":"data-visualization-generative-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/news\/stories\/data-visualization-generative-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"How Is Gen AI Changing the World of Data Visualization?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Generative AI<\/a> is poised to completely reshape how organizations think about data analysis. However, facilitating widespread change requires that anyone can easily visualize and understand the data. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We sat down with Christian Hagel-Sorensen<\/a>, who oversees user-experience design for Tableau Pulse<\/a>, to learn how generative AI is impacting data design and the way people see, understand, and act upon data across organizations. Here’s what he had to say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. What makes a good data visualization?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The mark of a good visualization<\/a> is the ability to understand it in a split second. Will someone get the right impression from the data visualization before their brain is\u200c able to process it? Time is money. And it costs you if your audience isn\u2019t able to immediately and accurately comprehend what the data is saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Time is money. And it costs you if your audience isn\u2019t able to immediately and accurately comprehend what the data is saying.<\/p>\nChristian Hagel-Sorensen, Director User Experience Design, Tableau <\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

You also need simplicity. I believe that having two, three, or four visualizations is often better than one because smaller bits of information are usually easier to understand. Think about a run-on sentence \u2014 they usually take more time for our brains to comprehend than if they were broken into smaller, more digestible nuggets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tableau Pulse is designed with this in mind. We’ve stripped out information and all the visual clutter, but not the data, so the data can be grasped more quickly and accurately than if it were presented in a singular, more complex visualization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. How does generative AI impact the way people relate to data?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Generative AI seems like magic. You can upload a CSV file and instantly be able to analyze it. Then you can ask the LLM to make a bar chart of two columns in the data \u2014 and it does. And that feels pretty magical. Still, it doesn’t solve a core problem for most people, which is knowing what questions to ask to get an even deeper understanding of the data they\u2019re looking at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, roughly 70% of people aren’t well served by their data. They use it in their jobs, but it isn’t foundational to their role, and it’s not one of their core skills. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most people who fall into this bucket are responsible for some KPIs but aren\u2019t able to accurately share how they are doing because, while they can easily ask the first one to three questions about their data, it takes a data expert to ask questions that will uncover meatier insights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n