Jeff Heer is Trifacta’s Chief Experience Officer, Co-founder and a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Washington, where he directs the Interactive Data Lab. Jeff’s passion is the design of novel user interfaces for exploring, managing and communicating data. The data visualization tools developed by his lab (D3.js, Protovis, Prefuse) are used by thousands of data enthusiasts around the world. In 2009, Jeff was named to MIT Technology Review’s list of “Top Innovators under 35”.
Garbage in, garbage out. When it comes to data, this well-known aphorism can prove particularly pernicious: errors or omissions in data can undermine otherwise meticulous analyses, often in ways that are easy to overlook. Rather than informed data-driven decisions, we may fall prey to data-driven delusions. Since our founding, our goal at Trifacta has been […]
MoreIn our current stress and uncertainty it can help to hear good news that lifts one’s spirits. Accordingly, we were thrilled to learn that Pat Hanrahan and Ed Catmull will receive the 2019 ACM Turing Award, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize” of Computer Science. While the award citation focuses on Pat and Ed’s […]
MoreWhen we set out to build a data preparation platform, the problem we were solving was obvious. Given the growing diversity of data sources and the variety of downstream analysis and visualization tools to choose from, we saw—and continue to see—data preparation as a critical intermediary to making data actionable and useful. But even though […]
MoreTableau made headlines recently for appointing a new CEO and much of the conversation about the company focuses on the company’s stock performance and market share. What shouldn’t get forgotten in all of this chatter is what Tableau has managed to accomplish: bringing the thrill of visually exploring data to a much broader audience. I […]
MoreThe current “big data” era has lead to a proliferation of new technologies that enable a broader base of users to consume and analyze data. In large part, this has been brought about by the advancement and popularity of data visualization. We’ve moved beyond traditional dashboards and are now incorporating data visualizations into nearly every […]
MoreHow do you feel when encountering a data set for the first time? Perhaps you may feel the dread of the unknown: what scripting, cleaning and interpretation hurdles await? Or, you may find that the data is so large it renders common tools like spreadsheets useless. Over my career working in data, I have felt […]
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