About Charted
Charted is a tool for automatically visualizing data, created by the
Product Science team at Medium. Give it the link to a data file and Charted returns a beautiful, shareable chart of the data. We built Charted with a few core principles in mind:
- Charted does not store any data.
It only fetches and visualizes what the link provides. It also refetches the data every 30 minutes, so the chart is always up-to-date. - Charted does not transform or manipulate data.
It displays only and exactly what it receives. Any necessary calculations or adjustments must already be reflected in the data. - Charted is not a formatting tool.
It is deliberately sparse in features. Charted focuses on getting from the data to the visualization with the fewest decisions possible.
As a result, we simplified Charted to just a few options. Here’s a walk-through of those options.
Provide Data
On the Charted home screen, paste the link to a data file or Google Spreadsheet and click “GO.”
Currently supported data files include:
- CSV files
- TSV files
- Google Spreadsheets with shareable links
- Dropbox share links to supported files
Chart Type
In the bottom-right corner is an option to toggle a chart between a line chart and stacked column chart.
Value Display
A second option in the bottom-right corner provides the option to either automatically round the values or use the raw strings in the file.
Titles, Labels, and Notes
Click on the title or any series label to edit it. Add an optional note by clicking the “add a note” section below the title.
Background Color
Charted can be toggled to a white or black background from the settings area in the top left.
Download Data
A link to download the data is in the settings area in the top left.
Edit Data File
Change the data file used for the chart by editing and saving the link in the setting area in the top left
Move to new chart
Any series can be moved into its own separate chart. To do so, hover over a series item in the legend and click the move icon.
That’s it!
For more details on Charted, visit the Github repo or try it out at charted.co.
