Introduction
I want to preface the start of this blog by complimenting the time and effort of those who organise makeover Monday. I appreciate all they do, from finding the data, validating, and manipulating it so that users, like myself, can experiment and engage with the Tableau community.
However as of late I have noticed a few things different about makeover Monday. The data feels not as big or as fun as it used to. With regards to fun I mean looking into the data exploring it and telling a story that might be unique or creating a visualization that supports the story you want to tell.
I had no way of proving that the data was not as good as previous weeks (until recently). As I write this blog, the most recent makeover Monday dataset (2020/W32) is about remote work, with a wopping 5 rows and 2 columns. Now, I thought the previous week (UK visits abroad) of 589 rows and 2 columns was rather lacking in terms of exploration, but this one just makes me feel “What’s the point?”.
In her blog https://www.makeovermonday.co.uk/week-32-2020/ Eva talks about how small this data is and how it might make people frustrated with spending a lot of time (too much time) on something. In her reviews of the visualisations the focus seemed to be about what the creator could supplement the data with, for example, adding pictures about people relaxing, or having big bold titles with a lot of text. The original visualisation looked very familiar to a lot of these makeovers. This leads me onto my first point.
Bad Visualisations
There are such things as visual best practices, and whatnot. Most of us who have come through the data school and information lab are aware of them. In my opinion I think that the makeover Monday should be for Visualisations that specifically do not adhere to best practice. If the user cannot tell within 10 seconds what the Visualisations is trying to tell them, it should be redone. If the colours conflict, it should be redone. If the chart is misleading or false information is displayed it must be redone. The most recent makeover Monday did not really do any of these, in fact it was probably fine. See below
Data Issues
As mentioned in my introduction, I had no way of proving that the data was bad, so I went through each makeover Monday dataset and noted down, the size in kilobytes, how many rows, columns, and total cells each one had. Below is a screenshot of the size of each dataset by year with an average line. You might be able to see that I have included a parameter for the median/average, a parameter for the aforementioned measures, and a parameter to jitter/unjitter the charts.
Over time, all metrics seem to go up from 2016 and then decline from 2017 onwards. The chart is logarithmic to ensure that extreme values can be seen on both ends. For each picture I show I would like to explain how to improve or change what is being done.
As side note for the 2017 and 2016 data I had to obtain by going through Tableau public Visualisations and then exporting the data. I would advise that the broken links on the MOM website to try to get the data are fixed.
Size is reasonably important for the user, if it is too big the computer they are using might struggle, too little and there is no story to tell. I know there are limits to how big the data could possibly be depending on the visualization that is chosen to be remade.
Next, I would advise to have a minimum number of cells/rows/columns for makeover Monday so that people can really try to look through that data and tell a story that they want to tell. Right now, I think people are shoehorned into telling the same story as others but in a different way because of the small data.
Conclusion
I still would not say that makeover Mondays are bad, but if trends continue, not having variability in the size of the data II feel that MOM is at risk of growing stale. I did not write this blog or make the visualization because I hate it, I did it because I care.
Fully aware of any backlash I may receive but I want to see It improve, even if I don’t submit or contribute as much as I should, I still download the data and see what I can do in an hour or so. Most of it is not great, but it is enjoyable. With less data, it is less fun.
Link to Viz