Dashboard week is finally upon us!
For our day 1 dashboard, we were given Storytelling with Data’s March challenge dataset and told to present, publish a dashboard to Tableau Public and write up a blog by 9AM the next day. No worries, I’ve made dashboards under time pressure before.
Problem is, our schedules were packed tight with events today leaving us with a real-time challenge.
Core Business Question: Who donates?
I’ve decided to work a certain subset of data – Asia Pacific recipients and the Asian Development Bank. Having worked with this financial institution before my time in The Data School Down Under and having a personal keen interest in Asia Pacific affairs, this was an obvious choice for me.
Data Prep
Data prep consisted of joining, filtering and grouping my data on Alteryx Designer to reduce the load when I load my data onto Tableau.
The Idea
Having heard Dashboard Week is one of the final times to use uncommon charts, I initially wanted to build a sankey. Spent a solid 3+ hours building one too… but in the end, it just didn’t work out the way I wanted. It was too complicated looking and detracted from its ability to engage an audience. In the end, I decided to go with what I know best – simple and effective.
The Dash (Interactive Viz)
There are 3 core components to my dashboard:
- Who is the Asian Development Bank?
- What is and has been their role in the region (compared to other donors and to recipients)?
- What have they contributed to?
I’ve used a Z layout to answer these sub-questions, starting with the bigger overview at the very top (Description of ADB) and overview of total donors on the top left. The further down and right you go, the more drilled down we go. Here’s my break down of question to its corresponding section.
Who is the Asian Development Bank?
What is and has been their role in the region (compared to other donors)?
What is and has been their role in the region (to recipients)?
What have they contributed to?
Tooltip showing top 5 donation purpose
Colours
I chose to use ADB’s colour palette and a font similar to the ones they use on the website.
Reflections
What Went Well:
- Realising I wasted a lot of time on the sankey chart that I didn’t use
- Getting something decent together by the deadline
- Spent way too long on this dashboard (I’m up past my bedtime)
Even Better If:
- Better prior planning to minimise lost time
- Timeboxing and following it
- We had the full time to work on our dashboards
- More colourblind friendly colours
- Better use of storytelling and prompts through text
- ADB logo?
