Today was our final day of Dashboard Week, and our task was to work with data relating to the World Cup. I decided to focus on matches ending in draws, and specifically looked at draws over time, by tournament type, and by team to see how these factors influenced match outcomes.
The first part of my process comprised data exploration and figuring out the specific factors mentioned above. As I started building out charts for each factor, I wanted to consider best practices, so I would constantly ask myself:
- What would be the best chart type for this insight?
- How can I reduce clutter to make this insight easier to grasp?
- Where can I implement parameters or dynamic zone visibility to make the most of the space I have?
- Where does this chart fit into my overarching story?
With all that in mind, this is what I achieved today:
For me personally, this dashboard really highlights how much I've improved over the course of training. Since we only had 3.5 hours to build this, I felt that I managed my time quite effectively. I was also surprised that I didn't run into any major blockers! Every time I thought I'd have an issue with a calculation, I resolved it fairly quickly, which just goes to show how much I've learned in the past few months.
That being said, I'm definitely keen on making improvements. In the near future, I plan to add KPI-style cards to the right side of the header, adjust some charts and formatting, and replace the historical table with more recent data pertaining to penalty shootouts since that's what signifies a tie in the World Cup today. (If you're curious about how I've iterated on this dashboard since the time I published this blog, you can check it out here).
The main lesson I learned today was that improvement happens gradually, and can even be invisible to you in the process of learning! Something I'll take into the future is to set checkpoints when learning something new so that I can clearly see how much I've grown. Overall, training has been an incredible journey and I'm excited to see where the rest of my career takes me.