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:
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- Web scraping the data from the link provided
- 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.
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:
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- What insights do I want to emphasise and
- 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