No-Code Tools to Make Interactive Data Visualization
Or: What data analysts, journalists and other professionals can do with data.
Hi!
Here’s another use of data that anyone who has ever made a report will find useful: making visualizations. The no-code tools presented in this article produce visualizations like Excel, but their main strength is interactive visualizations that can be embedeed on websites.
Spreadsheets and reports with only text aren’t enough to show the insights we found in a dataset. This is when we need data visualization to present the data in a way that helps everyone grasp difficult concepts.
In this article, I’ll show you six no-code tools to easily start making stunning visualizations. I selected these tools because they’re easy to use, have great graphic design, can be produced without writing code, and are free. On top of that, all of them are interactive, so the graphs are more playful and contain more detail.
1. Flourish
Flourish allows you to create stunning charts, maps, and interactive stories. It’s straightforward and contains a template library with different visualization options.
Who should use Flourish? Anyone interested in data storytelling. The different visualization and animation options help with it.
Pros of the free version
Apart from the usual charts and maps, you can create bar races, quizzes, and carousels with Flourish.
It’s great for storytelling. You can create impressive “scrolly” stories, with no custom code.
It offers a lot of options to customize visualization.
Cons of the free version
You can’t keep your data and projects private. All data uploaded is public.
You can’t connect to live CSV or Google Sheets files in the free version.
Example
This is a bar race of the population in different countries between 1960 and 2016. You can interact with this visualization here.
That’s only the first tool. The rest of the tools are useful for more than creating bar races.