Prólogo

In my capacity as a freelance data visualization educator, consultant, and designer, I’ve been deeply immersed in most corners of the data visualization world since the late 2000s and been fortunate to have a front-row seat to a huge amount of change. The technological landscape is always shifting. From the evolution of the tools of our trade to the platforms on which our work reaches its audience, there are always new forces pushing and pulling.

Where once this was a small, niche community of specialists, the elevated mainstream exposure of visualization led to substantial growth, both in the volume of enthusiastic participants and through the improved widening in their diversity. A field is only as rich as the breadth of its sensibilities and cultures, and the trajectory is hopeful.

This expanding pool of talent continues to inject fresh thinking. Traditional discourse and so-called established convictions are being challenged. A heightened appetite for experimentation has led to innovative methods impacting audiences in novel ways. The boundaries of creative possibility are being stretched beyond just the chart and just the visual.

What remains unchanged is a desire among data visualization designers and developers to attain maximum technical expressiveness and fluency. This is the ultimate capability. Expressiveness is having access to the broadest set of representation and presentation options. It’s being able to create more than—or at least as much as—you’re able to imagine. For many years, D3.js has been the JavaScript library that offers this.

Fluency is about accomplishing tasks that are too hard to do well by hand or too laborious to repeat by hand. Fluency minimizes the friction from not knowing how to perform certain technical tasks or from not knowing whether they’re even possible. Fluency is about having the discipline to know when and why you should and shouldn’t make certain choices.

This is where the third edition of D3.js in Action comes in. The previous editions skillfully presented readers with an understanding of what D3.js can do and how to do it. The third edition transcends these technical contents, addressing the when, why, and for whom, in the context of contemporary data visualization practices.

The most valuable books in any discipline tackle topics that have steep and, perhaps for some, overwhelming learning curves. They make those curves gentler and more surmountable. They work simultaneously as introductory texts for beginners and as sophisticated references for more advanced practitioners. They weave together the apparent objectivity of technology with the inherently subjective craft of visual communication. D3.js in Action delivers against these demands.

This is a book that is to be used. “In Action” reflects the applied nature of the teaching it delivers with relevant examples, valuable exercises, and inspiring case studies helping learners to take their learning from the page and put it into practice.

This is a book that promotes being useful. The essence of doing things because you should, not because you could, is a persistent theme. You want to make functionally cool things? Of course. You wish to make aesthetically beautiful things? Who doesn’t? This book will satisfy those cravings but through the lens of what is right and what is relevant. Your results will be useful to the people they’re designed for.

The book is also about visualization that is usable. To design visualizations effectively is to create work that is responsive to the myriad platforms through which it may be consumed, elegantly adapting to different shapes, sizes, and feature compatibilities. To be usable, visualizations must also be equally accessible for all characteristics and abilities of the people using them. This text gives due importance to this often-neglected topic.

The foundations of this book, through its early editions, come from the vital work of Elijah Meeks, who has been a champion developer, a prominent promoter of community and better practices, and a thoughtful critic of data visualization practice from his real-world perspective developing data visualizations in industry.

Anne-Marie Dufour is the perfect candidate to have taken on this new edition for the latest cohort of learners. She possesses that rare combination of being a highly accomplished data visualization developer and having a keen eye for design and instinct for creativity. Her substantial technical and communicative talents are perfectly supplemented by a natural flair for breaking down complex subjects into digestible and understandable parts. Anne-Marie’s own learning journey informs how she helps others, and there is no better person to take the wheel and drive you through this exciting subject.

Andy Kirk

Independent Data Visualization Expert