Dashboard Week Day 2 – Where are UFO Sightings in the US?

by | Jun 29, 2022 | Johanna Josodipuro

For the second day of the dashboard week, we are provided with a link to a website that has data on UFO sightings (you can view it here). There are 2 main tasks:

    1. Web scraping the data from the link provided
    2. Building a dashboard with Tableau

Most of my visualisations on Tableau Public are the long scrolling layout. So this time, I aim to try something new and went with just one desktop dashboard. Another reason is that a long-form layout takes a longer time to build which probably means I’ll have to cut corners with the formatting.

Dashboard Week Day 2 - UFO sightings dashboard thumbnail

Figure 1: Dashboard Week Day 2 – UFO sightings

 

What I discovered is when going with the desktop layout, I cannot show as many insights from the data compared to a long scrolling dashboard and I have to be more thoughtful in:

    1. What insights do I want to emphasise and
    2. How can they be put together on just one screen without cluttering the dashboard
Key Takeaway

There are some parts of your work process which will take a longer time, which is different from people to people. Personally, I usually spend longer time in the data preparation (this time, web scraping) but save time in building the dashboard on Tableau. I suggest to identify your own work style and time pattern as it will be easier to plan and ensure that you complete all the tasks by the deadline. And be comfortable in not visualising all the insights you have. Often you can tell better stories from your data if you keep your topic focused.

 

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me on Twitter or Linkedin.

Cheers,

Jo

 

 

Johanna Josodipuro
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.