25 Lecture 8 Handouts
Dashboards and interactivity
25.1 Today’s session
Why use interactivity and dashboards?
Good storytelling
Creating dashboards in Tableau
25.2 Today’s learning objectives
Explain the importance and benefits of adding interactive elements to visualisations
Describe different techniques for adding interactivity and their uses
Recall the best practices for dashboard creation
Describe the role storytelling plays within data visualisation
Create data visualisations and dashboards with interactive components Tableau
25.3 - Why use interactivity and dashboards?
25.3.1 Power of data visualisation
- Data visualization: a powerful tool for conveying insights from complex datasets.
- Visuals enhance comprehension and facilitate decision-making.
- Interactive visualizations: moving beyond static visuals to engage users actively.
- Interactive visualizations are a fantastic tool in a variety of settings thanks to their ability to optimize the way information is displayed
25.3.2 The Importance of Interactivity
- Interactivity fosters engagement and exploration.
- Allows users to tailor visualizations to their needs.
- Facilitates deeper understanding and analysis of data.
- Examples of interactive elements: filters, sliders, drill-downs, etc.
25.3.3 Benefits Interactivity
- Increases information uptake
- Provides opportunity to show high level data and drill into more detailed data if needed
- Think about filtering on different groups etc.
- Highly effective in catering to audience needs
- Coaches may want to see individual players data, where club sponsors may be more interested in team performance.
25.3.4 Dashboards
- Dashboards: a centralized platform for displaying multiple visualizations.
- Data visualisation: a representation of a specific set of numerical data displayed in a graph, table, etc.
- Dashboard: aggregates insights from various data sources into a single interface.
- Provide a comprehensive overview of key metrics and trends.
- Customizable and scalable to accommodate diverse user needs.
25.3.5 Design principles for effective dashboards
- Keep it simple: prioritize clarity and usability.
- Consistency in design elements and layout.
- Utilize appropriate visualizations for different data types.
- Consider accessibility and responsiveness across devices.
25.3.6 Data preparation and integration
- Importance of data preparation: cleaning, transforming, and structuring datasets.
- Integrating multiple data sources into a unified dashboard. Ensuring data accuracy and relevance for meaningful insights.
- Think about what you are displaying and how
- Non-data ink
- Colour use
- Best method for individual visualisations
- Is your dashboard easy to understand
25.3.7 Adding interactivity
- Exploring interactive elements: filters, parameters, actions.
- Enhancing user experience through dynamic interactions.
- Best practices for designing intuitive and responsive dashboards.
25.3.8 Best practices
- Understand user needs
- Simplify complexity
- Choose the right visualizations
- Prioritize information
- Provide context
- Ensure consistency
- Enable interactivity
- Test and iterate
- Provide help and documentation
25.3.9 Storytelling in Data Visualisation
- Storytelling adds context and meaning to data.
- A well-crafted narrative guides users through insights.
- Techniques for effective storytelling in dashboards:
- introduction (attract)
- plot development (engage)
- conclusion (punchline)
25.3.10 Introduction (attract)
- Identify theme
- Know your audience
- Determine purpose
- Set the tone
- Keep it simple
25.3.11 Plot (engage)
- Interactive vs. non-interactive
- Choice of visualizations
- Pay attention to size, colors, space
- Purposeful arrangement Walk audience through the story
25.3.12 Conclusion (punchline)
- Conclude clearly
- Place your conclusion strategically
- Chronologically
- Ensure the audience understands the key take home message
25.3.13 Storytelling in Dashboards
To summarise:
Always think about the data visualisation principles
Structure dashboards with a narrative flow (where possible)
Use annotations, titles, and descriptions to guide users.