# Tableau UI Kit: Streamline Dashboard Creation with this tool | with Robert Janezic

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2023-01-30
- **Format:** Video · 63 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Tool strategy, Productivity
- **Tools:** Tableau (dashboards, embedding)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-ui-kit-streamline-dashboard-creation-with-this-tool-a-conversation-with-robert-janezic
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A11wZ8C7iF8

I sit down with Robert Janezic, a product designer in JPMorgan Chase's Tableau Center of Excellence, to explore the Tableau UI Kit, a Figma-based prototyping tool for planning dashboards before you build them. Robert walks through version 2.0, demonstrates building an application-style dashboard live, and we discuss why prototyping is an under-appreciated part of the dashboarding process.

## Key takeaways

- A UI kit is a published library of reusable components and styles that lets you prototype Tableau dashboards in Figma before committing development time, and changes pushed to the library update everywhere it's used.
- Robert's version 2.0 leans on newer Figma features (Boolean toggles, instance swap, nested instances and preferred instances) to collapse what used to be 100+ component variants into single configurable components.
- Treat dashboards like applications: separate navigation from filtering and supplemental links, use sidebars or top nav bars correctly, and design with proper proximity, contrast and spacing.
- Auto layout in Figma works like flex in code, keeping spacing and proportions responsive so a resized layout doesn't require manual rework.
- Prototyping pays off most for mature teams and for embedding projects, where you're effectively building a product, but adds little value if you've only just adopted Tableau.

## Chapters

- 0:43 What a UI kit actually is
- 4:11 Touring the Tableau UI Kit 2.0
- 7:08 Designing like an application
- 13:33 Publishing libraries and pulling in components
- 16:37 Building a dashboard live
- 26:48 Auto layout and responsive design
- 34:25 Why prototype instead of building in Tableau
- 41:09 How and why Robert built the kit
- 50:07 Embedding as the obvious use case
- 52:37 Dribbble, opinions and designing for people
- 57:27 Future streams and full builds

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-ui-kit-streamline-dashboard-creation-with-this-tool-a-conversation-with-robert-janezic

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena