This marks the first day of the dashboard week. We’re provided 5 different datasets on food, their nutrients, ingredients and retention factors (how much nutrients are retained after processing/cooking) and by the next day morning, we need to come up with a story or tool on Tableau, publish a blog post about it and finally present our dashboard. We are also free to use Alteryx or other tools we’ve learnt to prep the data or to get additional datasets.
You’re very welcome to explore the datasets from this link to get a better context of this blog post or if you feel like creating a visualisation yourself.
There’s a lot of data here and given the nature of the data which is based on food and nutrients, it can be challenging to find an interesting story (heaps of elements nutrients here, I feel like I’m taking Chemistry and Biology classes). So I decided to approach it from ‘The What’ and ‘The How’:
1) The What?
On the ‘What?’ aspect, I went for a narrow approach, only focusing on one food classification group, ‘Fish and Seafood’. But in the end, it’s still difficult to squeeze in interesting insights on their own, which led me to emphasise more on the ‘How’.
2) The How?
I focused on how I can deliver the insights in an engaging way through my dashboard interactions on Tableau and presentation. Since it’s meant to be published on our Tableau Public account and is not a client project, we have the freedom to be as creative as we want. So rather than creating a conventional visualisation, I went for a quiz-like dashboard to encourage the audience to be involved and chose a topic that’s relevant to everyone. Most of us love sushi and other seafood!
Here are the screenshots of my dashboard:
All in all, I intended my dashboard to provide basic knowledge about the content of toxic heavy metal elements in seafood. The time constraint is definitely a challenge for me and if I have more time, I would have added more information on the harms of these elements in your diet and would probably also include a better comparison of these intake amount to a person’s normal serving. Well, probably it’s going to be a story for another time.
Key Takeaway
For tasks with tight deadlines, it’s important to time-box – assign time limits to small sections of your tasks. In most cases, it’s tempting to prolong a certain part of your whole work process, such as brainstorming for ideas. Usually what will cross your mind is that if you stick a bit longer, you’ll finally “find it” and can create your best ever visualisation out of that gem. But before you realise it, time quickly passed and it’s already just 30 minutes away from your deadline. Aim to meet the minimum first and if you have spare time, you can add the additional bits.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or Linkedin.
Cheers,
Jo
Author: Johanna Josodipuro
Johanna completed her Master of Commerce degree in Business Analytics and Marketing from the University of Sydney. She was introduced to Tableau during her studies and it wasn't long before she used it to participate in Tableau community initiatives, such as Viz For Social Good. She loves how it enables non-technical audiences to make sense of their data and help guide their decisions. At the same time, it also provides her with an avenue to tap into her analytical and creative side. In her free time, you can find her scrolling through Tableau Public while listening to music and sipping hot tea.