This week's guest is Nick Lim, a Singapore-based product design lead who drops by to share about his unique, AI-assisted portfolio site and why many AI-era portfolios look the same. Nick shares how he used Claude to quickly generate a PostHog-inspired, macOS Snow Leopard-style interactive portfolio where case studies open as draggable windows, then used Gemini to generate a custom “paperback chicken” mascot hero image with personal elements like coffee, photography, and fitness. He explains the long iteration process to animate the hero section, challenges like hallucinations and looping issues, and prompting tips such as limiting movements and using references because models interpret prompts differently. Nick also describes “nick.ai,” a Claude Haiku API chatbot built from context files, guardrails, and a “Nick Vibes” voice file to answer portfolio and work-style questions while avoiding obvious AI output.

https://nicklimzf.com/desktop/

00:00 - Prompting Animation Limits

01:56 - Job Hunt Sparks New Site

03:08 - PostHog Inspired Desktop UI\

04:29 - Claude Builds First Prototype

05:52 - Mascot Art with Gemini

07:06 - Animating the Hero Loop

08:22 - Vibe Coding Reality Check

09:40 - Avoiding AI Video Glitches

10:34 - Easter Eggs and Personality

11:20 - Nick AI Chatbot Feature

13:42 - Guardrails and Persona Prompts

14:52 - Voice and Nick Vibes File

15:34 - Biggest Challenge and Wrap Up

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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.

Don't forget to subscribe, follow for more tips and check out the full playlist

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

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🤝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐍𝐢𝐜𝐤

▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicklimzf/

#datavisualization #design #infographic #vibecoding #claudefable #claudedesign #portfolio #portfoliodesign #informationdesign

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.

Don't forget to subscribe, follow for more tips and check out the full playlist

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

In this episode of Secrets of the Viz, Brian shares about his Iron Viz performance, focusing on how he built and presented a story in just a few minutes. Brian shares how he found the narrative by exploring a books dataset, noticing that classics could be massively reviewed yet lower rated while fantasy franchises were both highly reviewed and highly rated. They break down his signature left-nav, right-story layout and his step-by-step, one-sheet navigation approach, where each “step” reveals hidden elements. Brian explains how most of the work happened in Tableau Prep through heavy scaffolding and data densification, enabling a clean Tableau build with only a few map layers and smoother animations. He also discusses mark types that animate well, why polygons don’t, and why storytelling and cutting content for a 3–4 minute presentation was the hardest part.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/brian.moore7221/viz/HogwartsOverHemingwayIronViz2026/HogwartsOverHemingway

00:29 - Meet Brian

00:52 - Finding the Book Story

02:08 - Signature Layout Style

03:43 - One Sheet Navigation

04:10 - Scaffolding With Prep

07:20 - Rebuilding the Flow

09:19 - Smoother Animations

10:28 - Map Layers Magic

11:49 - Limits and Wish List

12:36 - Hardest Part Storytelling

15:29 - Practice and One Sheet Tip

16:40 - Smoke and Mirrors Wrap

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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.

Don't forget to subscribe, follow for more tips and check out the full playlist

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

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🤝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧

▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bm111/

▶ https://x.com/bmoorewastaken

▶ https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/brian.moore7221/vizzes

▶ https://domoorewithdata.com/

#datavisualization #analytics #design #infographic #books #goodreads #hogwarts #harrypotter #hemingway

In this chaotic behind-the-scenes episode of Secrets of the Viz, we had Kevin on to walk through a sped-up, five-minute rehearsal of building his final Iron Viz entry in Tableau, recorded before TC. Kevin shows how he uses rehearsal-style guidelines, a cheat sheet, and parameters to hide setup marks before presenting, and explains that most of the design is built in Tableau with a dual-axis polygon and text, with only part of the background as an image. They discuss a clever search feature using a pipe string concatenator (e.g., searching “Batman” or “romance”), plus graphic novel recommendations like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, American Born Chinese, and Heartstopper. Kevin breaks down which parts were hardest time-consuming text placement, trial-and-error book visuals, and a heavily customized rank chart and why he avoided doing it all in Figma.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/kevin.wee/viz/BustingtheMythsAboutReadingGraphicNovelsIronViz2026/Dashboard

00:21 - Introduction

00:54 - Speedrun Build

05:36 - Using Concatenators to Search

06:08 - All about Graphic Novles

08:22 - The chaos behind the chart designs

09:17 - The secret to Kevin's rehearsal

10:05 - Toughest challenges

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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.

Don't forget to subscribe, follow for more tips and check out the full playlist

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

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🤝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐊𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐧

▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-wee/

▶ https://x.com/KevinWee90

▶ https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/kevin.wee/

▶ https://kevinwee.com/category/portfolio/

#datavisualization #analytics #design #infographic #books #goodreads #graphicnovels #comics #webcomics

In this episode of Secrets of the Viz, Ana Lucia Gonzalez and Prina Shah from The Guardian joins us to share about building a bird migration data visualization. They discuss how a broad pitch became bird “diaries,” the challenge of sourcing and verifying uneven migration datasets across regions, and layering routes with temperature and vegetation data. Prina explains iterative design decisions, especially the landscape-map vs portrait-mobile problem; and moving from a globe concept to cropped flat maps that worked for mobile-first scrollytelling. They cover why animation and timelines suited migration, how smooth motion and faded “tails” were achieved with an interactive journalist, and how radar, GPS trackers, community-sourced bird sounds, and illustrations filled gaps where photos and video were limited, including a featured bird that follows hurricanes.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2025/oct/16/bird-migration-is-changing-what-does-this-reveal-about-our-planet-visualised-aoe

00:00 - Globe or Flat Map

00:33 - Meet the Guests

01:12 - Project Origins

02:11 - Hunting Migration Data

04:05 - Mobile Map Design

06:33 - Mobile vs Desktop

08:22 - Animating the Journey

10:52 - Tracking Birds Science

12:57 - Illustrations and Audio

14:55 - Favorite Birds and Stories

17:50 - Wrap Up and Next Projects

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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.

Don't forget to subscribe, follow for more tips and check out the full playlist

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

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

🤝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐚

▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ana-lucia-gonzalez-paz-b800244/

▶ https://x.com/anlugonz

▶ https://linktr.ee/analuciagonzalez

▶ https://bsky.app/profile/anlugonz.bsky.social

🤝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐚

▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/prina-shah-939b94101/

▶ https://x.com/PrinaShah2

▶ https://bsky.app/profile/prinashah.bsky.social

🤝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐏𝐡𝐨𝐞𝐛𝐞

▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/phoebe-weston-ab156bb4/

▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHQBxx1w4u5N6jfhP_xakiQ

▶ https://x.com/phoeb0

🤝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐨

▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoniovoce/

#datavisualization #analytics #design #infographic #journalism #newspaper #digitalstories #birds #birdsmigration #ecosystem #birdwatching #migration #nature

Charlene Chua, a data and graphics journalist at The Straits Times, talks about her team’s “Modern Dating” visual story and why dating can feel harder despite apps and technology. They discuss Singapore-specific pressures like the BTO housing scheme and family expectations, and how the team anonymous interviews, expert perspectives, and illustrations to humanize the data. Charlene shares how they storyboarded in Figma, evaluated different visual story structures (inverted pyramid, martini glass, diamond), and iterated on key design ideas like the HDB window metaphor, a starry-night palette, and a hopeful “soulmate” ending. She also highlights challenges of compressing a complex, human topic into a concise story under a tight three-to-four-week deadline.

https://www.straitstimes.com/multimedia/graphics/2026/04/modern-dating-singapore/index.html

00:00 - Why Love Feels Unlearned

00:23 - Meet Charlene And The Viz

01:14 - Dating Apps Spark The Idea

02:13 - Singapore Pressures BTO Family

03:29 - Survey Data And Human Stories

05:45 - App Archetypes And Communication

07:48 - Media Expectations And Reality

08:47 - Visual Metaphors And Storyboarding

10:06 - Story Structures For Visuals

12:55 - Pillars And Interactive Concepts

15:25 - From Inspirations To Final Build

17:15 - Colors Windows And Soulmates

20:10 - Biggest Challenges And Wrap Up

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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.

Don't forget to subscribe, follow for more tips and check out the full playlist

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

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

🤝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐞

▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlenechuaxinzi/

▶ https://www.straitstimes.com/

#datavisualization #analytics #design #infographic #journalism #newspaper #digitalstories

Martina and Stefan joins us this week to talk about about a commissioned project for the Luxembourg's Museum of Art & History that helps teams explore museum collections through an internal visualization platform. They discuss how museum data is shaped by decades of manual record-keeping, inconsistencies, and missing fields, and why highlighting gaps can drive better digitization and decision-making. The pair describe how they met, how they collaborated with a proactive data-scientist client, and how they used surveys, case studies, museum visits, and brand exploration to shape the tool.

Style Guide

https://www.behance.net/gallery/244239007/Museum-Collections-Explorer

Demo

https://vimeo.com/1164475216?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

00:28 - Meet the Guests

01:27 - From Neuroscience to Dataviz

01:57 - How They Teamed Up

03:31 - Project Kickoff and Goals

05:21 - Client Collaboration and Surveys

06:28 - Scale of Museum Collections

07:22 - Design Iterations and Branding

09:32 - Four Lenses for Exploration

10:48 - Visualizing Missing Data

13:27 - Flipping the Narrative UX

15:14 - Timeline and Visitor Potential

17:29 - Guiding Decisions with Insights

18:36 - Biggest Challenges and Tradeoffs

21:32 - What’s Next and Wrap Up

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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.

Don't forget to subscribe, follow for more tips and check out the full playlist

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

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

🤝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐚

▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinazunica/

▶ https://linktr.ee/martinazunica

▶ https://www.behance.net/martinazunica_

🤝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐟𝐚𝐧

▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefan-pullen/

▶ https://www.stefanpullen.com/

#tableau #datavisualization #analytics #design #tableau #infographic #dashboard #uxui #museum

Take a moment and think back to the first time you remember food in-game. This week, Matt Huff drops in as a host to dig into my #IronViz entry that explores how food in video games is shown historically from 1970 to 2025 and how it has evolved over the years.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/louisyu/viz/PlayingwithFoodIronViz/Evolution

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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.

Don't forget to subscribe, follow for more tips and check out the full playlist

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

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🤝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐭

▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mhuff04/

▶ https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/matt.huff/vizzes

▶ https://x.com/matt_huff_photo

▶ https://medium.com/%40matt_huff

▶ https://usergroups.tableau.com/retail-and-consumer-goods-tableau-user-group/

🤝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐋𝐨𝐮𝐢𝐬

▶ https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/louisyu/vizzes

▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/yulouis/

▶ https://x.com/datavizlouis

▶ https://datavizlouis.webflow.io/

#tableau #datavisualization #analytics #design #tableau #infographic #dashboard #uxui #videogames #ironviz #finalfantasy15 #pacman #retrogaming #arcade #gamesnightviz #ironviz