One of the re-occurring questions I get asked during or after a training workshop comes from delegates curious to know what tools were used to build ‘this’ or ‘that’ visualisation project. Whilst I attempt to answer to the best of my awareness and judgment on a one-off basis, I recognise there is a wider appetite for this kind of insight amongst any visualisation enthusiast.
I have some plans for a relatively big piece of work around this issue (and combining several others key aspects like this, too) in 2014 but, in the meantime, I thought I’d share a quick tip that I’ve found to be a useful source of reference. Our friends at visualizing.org have a great feature on their gallery that enables you to search for projects based on the tools that were used to build each project.
Details of the tools that have contributed to the build of each visualisation are recorded by the creator at the time of the initial upload into the gallery. Naturally, we are at the mercy of how comprehensive this information is recorded in the first place but there should be good faith in the quality of the data.
This leaves the searching of visualisations that have been built using specific tools (admittedly, often alongside several others) a really straightforward task and offers a decent option for those wanting to learn more about the behind-the-scenes mechanics of the some of the visualisations they are interested in.
