#Throwback Thursday - Week 12 at The Data School

by Serena Purslow

A design heavy project, and training in demos - join me for my weekly reflection on life at the Data School!

Monday - Client Kickoff and Makeover Monday

As in previous weeks, our Monday morning meant our client kick-off meeting, going over the requirements and goals for this weeks' project. Unlike previously, the brief this week was heavily design-focus, meaning a great time to put out Tableau skills to the test! Design in Tableau is definitely one of my favorite things I get to do at the Data School, so I was super excited for the project this week.

One of the elements our client was particularly interested in was creating a dashboard for mobile view - something none of my cohort had attempted yet, so the first thing we got to researching was how to transform a regular dashboard into one suitable for mobile view, and working out what things we could and couldn't incorporate. We spent most of the day creating a really in-depth plan for our design, before exploring building this in Tableau, and seeing how things looked in mobile view. There are a few things that don't transfer well into mobile view, such as floating containers, meaning we spent quite a bit of time going back and forth from the drawing board, working out what would work best to fit the brief.

We spent the last hour of Monday doing a Makeover Monday challenge, in which I put into practice some of the parameter actions I had learnt the previous week. You can check out my Viz here:

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/serena.purslow/viz/MakeoverMonday2023W4/Dashboard1

Tuesday - Tableau Server, and Project Time

Tableau Server is something that I think scares all of my cohort a little, as the concept of a server is relatively new to all of us, and getting our heads around different elements of it can be a bit difficult. Our Tuesday lesson on Server focused on thinking about the data pipelines when accessing/using data from computer end all the way to the server end. We also had a look at permissions on Server i.e. ways to limit what different users can access. Every Server session we've had I have found fairly challenging, so I was glad to get back to project time in the afternoon, and get stuck into flashy designs in Tableau!

Wednesday - Design Central

After a catch-up meeting with our client on Wednesday, we realized there were quite a few elements of our design that we needed to change, and we spent most of Wednesday working with these updates, and trying to scope out the best and most simplistic designs for the data we have. One thing we really wanted to incorporate, were curved boxed for KPIs and graph elements. For a regular computer dashboard, this can be done by using Figma to create a background design (providing you know exactly what you want your dashboard to look like), and then using this image as a base, and floating charts and KPIs on top of the image. However, as I mentioned before, floating containers don't transfer well to mobile dashboard layouts, meaning that we were unable to go down this route if we wanted our dashboards to be usable both on desktop and mobile. I tried numerous ways to get round this issue, but in the end it was evident that I would have to stick with regular square designs for my dashboard. A good lesson nonetheless!

Thursday - Tableau Prep and Demos

It has been quite a few weeks since I've used Tableau Prep, and it was startling how rusty I had already become, when attempting a Preppin' data challenge this morning. However, after going through a few challenges, I started to feel confident again in Prep. The focus of this morning was creating Ranks and LODs in Tableau Prep, which is quite a lot easier to do than in Tableau Desktop.

The focus of this afternoon was on giving demos (with the goal of selling the software we are demonstrating). I had a go at giving a demo in Tableau Prep, and was glad that I had spent the morning working with it.

Here are my 3 key take-aways for giving a demo:

  1. Go slowly!!
  2. Know your audience - are they data literate or not? What software do they currently use? Are they managers, or analysts? All of these factors should change how you go about your demo, and what you incorporate.
  3. Essay structure... What I mean by this, is think of your demo like a short essay - you want an introduction, i.e. what you are going to discuss, and what software you're using, a central part - the main demo, and a conclusion - what have you demonstrated, and why is this important for the audience?

Friday - Presentation day...

Tomorrow is presentation day, as usual I'm a little nervous, especially as I can be such a perfectionist, and the problem with design is that it's hard to know when to stop. Just like art, knowing when to stop, or when to make more edits is a skill in itself, and one that doesn't necessarily thrive under time pressure! Let's see how it goes!