
Ask HN: Data visualization consultant - mxmpawn
I&#x27;m working as a software engineer (mostly web, mostly backend). I&#x27;ve worked some years as a freelancer (now working at a part time job + contractor job) always working on the backend side.<p>I&#x27;m getting bored of this kind of job and I&#x27;m exploring data visualization. In my job (news media) my boss started to ask me to make some things with d3.js and I liked it, with the plus side that the &quot;deliverable&quot; is something people can see and if it&#x27;s done well it could be easily shared and generate visits.<p>So I started to think about learning more about d3.js, build and show some things with it in my free time and then start looking for clients.<p>Anyone here already doing something like this? what do you think about it? what are your experiences?
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tom_b
I would recommend starting with Stephen Few's books: _Show Me the Numbers_ and
_Information Dashboard Design: Displaying Data for At-a-Glance Monitoring_ to
get an idea of visualization from a business needs perspective. These are easy
reads.

Few is heavily influenced (and cites) Edward Tufte - Tufte is probably the
definitive reference for communicating data with visual techniques. If you are
interested in pursuing scientific visualization, you probably need to spend
some time with Tufte. I never have properly done this myself.

These sources will give you a solid foundation without being tied to specific
tech. You'll probably find lots of libraries built on top of d3.js that
implement the basic ideas of both authors. I have been meaning to look at data
exploration examples (e.g., stuff with visualization examples in R) and
translate to different front/backend. That might be neat too.

Build some examples where the visualization provides real insight to a defined
business problem and you will probably score some new opportunities for
yourself.

Good luck.

~~~
mxmpawn
Very nice feedback, thanks!. I know Tufte (here in HN there was a topic about
his opinion on pie charts) but I've never read something from Stephen Few.
I'll definitely check it out.

Regarding the building of some examples, yes, I've already made some of them
for the news media job I have, but I'm doing a contract job for a real estate
aggregator company (like trulia but from Argentina) and I'm interested in all
things regarding public transport. So I think I'll explore these topics and
see what sticks.

~~~
thenipper
I've been learning this stuff for work some. I've found that Good Charts: The
HBR Guide to making Smarter More Persuasive Data Visualizations[1] to be
helpful.

Also the Wall Street Guide to Info Graphics[2] is a good 'recipe' book for
graphs/charts.

1\. [https://www.amazon.com/Good-Charts-Smarter-Persuasive-
Visual...](https://www.amazon.com/Good-Charts-Smarter-Persuasive-
Visualizations/dp/1633690709) 2\. [https://www.amazon.com/Street-Journal-
Guide-Information-Grap...](https://www.amazon.com/Street-Journal-Guide-
Information-
Graphics/dp/0393347281/ref=pd_sim_14_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=28S6Y1SEGP6ACH7E397B)

------
takatin
I had previously contracted for Infinera working on their NMS suite. My
contribution was a PoC running on D3 and Angular, using Semantic Topology that
allows users to navigate any node or link in their network with zero clicks
(scrolling and panning gets them anywhere à la Google Maps).

The hardest, most time-consuming part was prototyping because the tools out
there (Framer, Principle, Quartz Composer, Adobe XD etc) are all optimized to
work with lists and grids, not visualisations. I ended up creating three
fully-functional prototypes in HTML and JS before finalizing on one. It was
hard to get good feedback from the teams without live, interactive prototypes.
There is also nothing like a standard library of well-designed components that
can be grouped together to quickly mockup custom visualizations, like we have
in Bootstrap for HTML frontends.

Another problem was performance; Angular, out-of-the-box, could not keep up
with the amount of data coming through their pipes.

All in all, it was challenging and very, very fun to do. When it finally
worked and people got their hands on it, it blew everyone away. If I were to
do it all over again, I’d focus a lot more on explaining the challenges and
setting realistic expectations. Custom visualisations are not 5-minute
WordPress installs.

The work is under NDA but if you feel the need to discuss anything, my email
is in my profile.

Some people I follow on twitter who are actively involved in DataVis:

Lisa Charlotte Rost (@lisacrost), Micah Stubbs (@micahstubbs), Jim
Vallandingham (@vlandham), Nicky Case (@ncasenmare), Nadieh Bremer
(@NadiehBremer)

~~~
beachstartup
we're putting some viz into our product now.

to your point, non-technical should be taught to understand that this is
challenging data and graphics programming (which means there is a whole dev
cycle associated with it), not photoshop or indesign style work where the tool
is itself a program that you instruct to do things by pointing or scripted
actions.

most people have no idea what the difference is.

------
vizyourdata
I have been doing freelance data viz with Tableau for a little over a year now
and love many aspects of the work. I am a full time revenue analyst and find
clients on and off for freelance.

I started with fiver.com where I didn't really make any money but I learned
many things and was able to do work for Dell and USC. It has more than paid
for itself to have their logos on my website, so it might be worth a look.
Some will discourage the low rate approach but it has worked for me to gain
experience over dollars in the beginning and I can currently charge market
average or better because of the experience.

Some other important lessons I have learned:

1\. Turn down work if you are too busy. Its worse to hurt a client
relationship than to pass up some work, to the point where you will lose much
more in the long run.

2\. Understand all the specific requirements before accepting a contract.

3\. Be realistic with the timetable, don't underestimate any complexities of
the data or requests.

4\. Make sure the client understands the iterative process and is available
for feedback along the way.

5\. Reconcile the vizzed data back to the source. Tools and programming can do
unexpected things to data if you don't fully understand all of the processes
that produce the viz.

I freelance because I love data and helping others understand data through
visualization. I also have found that data visualization is my passion when it
comes to career interests. If you are discovering the same while developing
with d3.js, I would recommend putting all your efforts into it. Good Luck!

------
cantlin
Sure, there are a bunch of places and ways you can do this.

For a start, companies of all shapes and sizes have or are building internal
data technology teams. Almost any large company wants to do things with data
that exceed what they can achieve by buying services. So they chuck all the
data in a warehouse, and then find themselves in need of a way of interpreting
and visualising it. You get fully-fledged internal facing products built on
that premise all the time.

Alternatively, visualising data is a huge part of what modern media companies
do. Examples range from Quartz, who built Atlas[0], amongst other things, to
Bloomberg, whose business facing financial intelligence services have to make
large volumes of data intelligible at a glance.

Beyond just the media, if you look at products like Facebook's Ad Platform or
Google's DFP or Analytics, the UIs devote a ton of effort towards visualising
data. It's probably harder to find tech companies that _don 't_ do large
amounts of this than companies that do.

I haven't seen it as a consultancy role, but it is certainly something you
could do on a contract basis with some companies if you wanted to. As with any
software contracting, if you can show a great strength in a narrow niche you
will command near-monopoly pricing for your services.

[0] [http://atlas.qz.com/](http://atlas.qz.com/)

------
jacomyal
FYI there is indeed a strong demand, and having the ability to develop full-
stacked web apps is a nice plus as well.

You can check this Google Group[0] to see actual requests (full-time jobs,
part-time jobs and limited prestations).

[0] [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/data-vis-
jobs](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/data-vis-jobs)

------
krmmalik
We're already doing something like this, although we're currently using MS
Power BI and will likely move to Tableau soon.

Our job as a company is to make the lives of business leaders easier, so
business intelligence is one way of doing that. We ask a series of questions
of the data, build out the visuals and then present findings and make
strategic recommendations.

We started off doing it for ourselves in the beginning so have been doing it
for almost a year now. My business partner has been doing this work previously
for a couple of years in a full time role.

Happy to do a skype to share info with you. Would be potentially open to
sending you some work once we build our portfolio up a bit better too. Finding
freelancers to work on this reliably and dependably is quite hard.

~~~
helicalinsight
HI Kam

I am a DWBI veteran. On the ETL side I have got excellent experience on Talend
and kettle. I have expereince on data visualization, data modeling, data
warehousing, BI, ETL.

please do have a look at some of my data visualizations work. Done using the
community (free) version of open source BI tool [Helical
Insight]([http://www.helicalinsight.com](http://www.helicalinsight.com))

[Travel
Dashboard]([http://www.helicalinsight.com/hi/?dir=Travel_Dashboard&file=...](http://www.helicalinsight.com/hi/?dir=Travel_Dashboard&file=travel_dashboard.efw))

[Sales
Dashboard]([http://www.helicalinsight.com/hi/?dir=Sales_Dashboard&file=s...](http://www.helicalinsight.com/hi/?dir=Sales_Dashboard&file=sales_dashboard.efw))

[Infograph]([http://www.helicalinsight.com/hi/?dir=CV_Creator/CV_Creator_...](http://www.helicalinsight.com/hi/?dir=CV_Creator/CV_Creator_1&file=CVCreator.efw))

One of my client implementation was on Envision GLobal. They are into training
and leadership domain wherein they conduct training followed by survey on
limesurvey. I had done data modeling for their reporting database, created ETL
for data loading from limesurvey database into reporting database, created a
GUI using which client can themselves trigger and run these ETL with
configurable parameters, integration of this into Drupal paltform for end
client access etc.

Reports were created for each and every individual user talking about his
traits as well as comparison with other colleagues (very similar to annual
report with images, text, formatted text, charts), ability to edit the report
via UI itself, save and email the reports (email scheduling), exporting etc.
Also proper user role management and data security was provided.

I would love to speak with you and discuss of possible working opportunity
with you. You can get in touch with me at

nikhilesh(at)helicalinsight.com

I am also dropping a mail to you

~~~
krmmalik
Thanks NikhilEsh. I will look out for your email and send across my calendar
to you when i get back into the office next week. It'd be good to chat.

------
randypitcherii
A large part of my job involves creating data visualizations to summarize work
to non-technical audiences.

I found Udacity's course on data visualizations to be a great resource for
nailing the basic rules of effective data visualization and communication.

Something I've learned as I've worked is to have some way to quickly try ideas
and some way to productionize the insights you've found for broad consumption.
So I really like using pyplot or tableau for really fast insight gathering and
visualization creation. Once I've got what I think are good visualizations, I
can then decide what makes the most sense for production. Sometimes this means
a custom D3 web solution, other times a tableau dashboard is just fine; it all
depends on the project.

And separate from all this, make sure you frequently include fresh sets of
eyes for your visualizations. It's easy to make something that is obvious and
useful to you, but is hard to understand for others.

Good luck consulting. I don't have much help in getting that started. I am
really passionate about this field so it's always great to hear about others
who enjoy visualizations as well!

------
seszett
I've done it, usually it's people stumbling upon the visualisations I did for
my own interest (from my website, Twitter, or d3's gallery) finding they'd
like something close to them and contacting me directly. Maps most often.

I like it, it's like paid leisure, and the more you do it, the most likely you
already have something that almost does exactly what they want and just needs
a few changes.

I wouldn't know where to start looking for clients though.

~~~
mxmpawn
I've looked at your work, you've got pretty great pieces.

If you don't mind me asking, which kind of organizations are usually
interested in your work?

~~~
seszett
Thanks!

For me it's usually smallish organisations, startups, sometimes associations,
who want a map that looks better than a run-of-the-mill Google maps with plain
markers, really. So they see something like
[https://ssz.fr/voies/](https://ssz.fr/voies/) or one of the variations of
[https://ssz.fr/territoire/](https://ssz.fr/territoire/) and ask for something
like it that shows their data in an adequate way (and hopefully a good looking
way too, using their colour scheme, etc).

After that they sometimes ask me if I'm available for more map-related
projects or iterative improvements to the first maps (and I am as long as
they're small enough projects which won't take me more than a week or two).

I think larger companies just don't email a random author after they find
their address on a map, but that's fine because they're less interesting to
work with in my opinion.

------
stared
I have been doing a similar kind of job. I really recommend this group for
finding contracts: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/data-vis-
jobs](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/data-vis-jobs)

The easy part is:

\- if you have a few projects, it is easy to show that you are competent and
for them to decide if it's style they want (I was luring with this one:
[http://p.migdal.pl/tagoverflow/](http://p.migdal.pl/tagoverflow/) and a few
other things on my GitHub page),

\- people are happy as they receive something visual (appeal of a good project
is obvious) and, often, cooler that they expected.

The bad part is that many projects were short - 1-2 days of work. Even if
charged at a high rate, still a lot of time is spent on switching before
projects, communication, etc.

...and some links for learning: [http://p.migdal.pl/2016/02/09/d3js-icm-
kfnrd.html](http://p.migdal.pl/2016/02/09/d3js-icm-kfnrd.html)

------
markovbling
Yes! The approach I took was to build a product that solves a broad problem
(in my case geographic visualisation) and showed that to get clients who
wanted something similar but tweaked for their use case. Of course they then
ask 'is it possible to do this other thing' and all of a sudden you're doing
data vis consulting.

As an aside, I'd suggest selling the data science too if you have the skills
since data viz isn't just about showing data but figuring out how to show it
to answer the relevant business questions - they go hand-in-hand and it's both
a more compelling sell and adds more value to deliver the full stack solution
instead of just the viz piece.

Good luck!

~~~
mxmpawn
My initial interest was in data science but it seems hard to get freelance
gigs. But maybe the viz thing could help for smoothing the field.

------
fractl
We use d3.js for a variety of our clients. We're always on the lookout for
freelancers. If you're interested in talking more about the type of work we
do, feel free to email me.

Eric eric@frac.tl

------
helicalinsight
please do have a look at some of my data visualizations work. Done using the
community (free) version of open source BI tool [Helical
Insight]([http://www.helicalinsight.com](http://www.helicalinsight.com))

[Travel
Dashboard]([http://www.helicalinsight.com/hi/?dir=Travel_Dashboard&file=...](http://www.helicalinsight.com/hi/?dir=Travel_Dashboard&file=travel_dashboard.efw))
[Sales
Dashboard]([http://www.helicalinsight.com/hi/?dir=Sales_Dashboard&file=s...](http://www.helicalinsight.com/hi/?dir=Sales_Dashboard&file=sales_dashboard.efw))
[Infograph]([http://www.helicalinsight.com/hi/?dir=CV_Creator/CV_Creator_...](http://www.helicalinsight.com/hi/?dir=CV_Creator/CV_Creator_1&file=CVCreator.efw))

You can get in touch with me at nikhilesh(at)helicalinsight.com

------
austinhulak
There's actually an entire company focused on exactly this (I know because I
used to work there).

You should check them out: [https://www.graphiq.com](https://www.graphiq.com)

~~~
mxmpawn
Thanks, I already knew about graphiq and it's a great inspiration, my idea, if
the consulting/freelancing works out, would be trying to pivot into a business
model similar to graphiq.

What can you tell us about your experience working for them? Do you know how
it got started?

------
catpolice
I would also like this job.

------
joshkpeterson
Look at Eyeo talk videos like Ben Fry's. There's a lot of data vis that goes
through there.

