In this episode of Secrets of the Viz, Ann, the current Iron Viz Champion, unpacks how she built her books visualization and delivered her on-stage story. Sheshares how her teaching background helped her practice and refine a “once upon a time” narrative with a Mad Libs-style twist, and why she focused on genre mashups from a dataset with many rows but few features. She explains the major data cleaning work of mapping thousands of messy Goodreads genres into 17 groups using Tableau, including rules like nulling genres used by fewer than five books. Ann also walks through her hand-drawn, bullet-journal-inspired backgrounds made in Figma and Procreate, plus dynamic zone visibility overlays and custom transparent shapes for a Venn and network chart. She describes cutting ideas due to a three-minute talk limit and optimizing a 50-minute build down to time.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/ann.pregler/viz/GenreMash-UpMadness-IronViz26/Opener

00:29 - Meet the Champion

01:44 - Storytelling Origins

02:26 - Why Genre Mashups

03:52 - Cleaning Thousands of Genres

08:13 - Hand Drawn Bullet Journal Look

11:09 - Dynamic Overlays and Accordion

13:10 - Custom Shapes for Circles

15:07 - Cutting the Build to Time

17:11 - Wrap Up and What's Next

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ℹ️ 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭?

Welcome to "Secrets of the Viz", where I dive deep into the amazing vizzes in #TableauPublic and other #DataVisualization tools. Have you ever wondered how these stunning visualizations come to life? I'll be peeling back the layers with the authors themselves as they share their inspirations, design processes and unique techniques. Join me as we explore, learn, and get inspired together.

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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVkjBKxQASMmwlAE89dt97IMSFqTpGldh

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🤝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐧

▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ann-pregler-61275922a/

▶ https://bsky.app/profile/annpregler.com

▶ https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/ann.pregler/vizzes

▶ https://annpregler.com/

#datavisualization #analytics #design #infographic #books #goodreads #bookgenre #onceuponatime