Essential Design Principles for Tableau is the second course in the Data Visualization with Tableau Specialization offered by UC Davis on Coursera. The 4-week course focuses on conceptual design principles of data visualizations, using Tableau as a medium to illustrate those principles. Topics covered include effective vs ineffective visuals, visual perception, best design practices and exploratory vs explanatory visualizations. Weekly quizzes and the final peer graded assignment are only available to students who pay for a certificate.
Design Principles for Tableau is much more about general design principles than it is about Tableau. The instructors could have used a different visualization tool like Python or R and left much of the lecture content unchanged, although Tableau makes examples and experimentation easily accessible. The lectures are generally well done and while there is not a huge amount of content, the topic is narrow enough that it covers most of the bases. That said, you're not going to learn a lot more about Tableau itself that you didn't already know from the first course.
Essential Design Principles for Tableau is a decent primer on the principles of designing data visualizations regardless of your data visualization tools. I would have liked to have seen a detailed walkthrough of the Tableau software somewhere in the first two courses of the specialization, but it is more focused on concepts and theory than the nuts and bolts of Tableau. I can't help but think I'd learn more about Tableau reading an instruction manual or watching a random YouTube video than taking this specialization, as it has a liberal arts style conceptual focus rather than a technical school style practical focus. I can't fault this course specifically for that overarching design decision, but if you're looking for a specialization that will teach you all the basic ins and outs of Tableau, this is not it.
I give Essential Design Principles for Tableau 3 out of 5 stars: Fair.
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