Learning Opportunity

Yesterday I decided that although I am powering through this 100 Days of Code course, it is also important to keep practicing my SQL and Tableau skills. I found data about the Ukrainian war- a simple enough dataset- and decided I was interested in seeing this data visualized. I set to work, and several hours later had finished analyzing the data and visualizing it.

After I finished, I was glad I had done it. However, I felt not totally satisfied with what I had come up with- and decided I will need to spend more time in Tableau and potentially take a course to get better at using it and be ready to tell stories and paint pictures with Tableau like I know that good data analysts can.

I have been taking my learning one step at a time, so I am ok with this being the starting point. However, I decided that a good way to grow as much as possible would be to seek feedback on my Viz- and hopefully get relevant comments. Amazingly, within the hour, I had a very helpful comment:

"Heroic effort shown in visualizing data through Tableau.

As a certified Tableau developer, I have some feedback which might help you eventually:

1) There is a lot of text in the dashboard. You can use storyboarding for text if you wish to present it to your relevant stakeholders.

2) The color coding / combination should be constant throughout your dashboard. At this moment, it needs some consistency.

3) For the images, you can remove the background through adobe or even freely available tools on the internet to let them blend in your dashboard.

4) Please group all the graphs with only one slicer for all the graphs / plots on your dashboard. It makes the life of your stakeholders much easier.

5) A legend is missing on the dashboard, which is a critical component of a dashboard.

6) You can use labels to select the range of the dates on top of the data visualization. In that way you won't have to make use of them repeatedly throughout your dashboard.

7) Please try to come up with ideas that your targeted viewers will be able to assess and understand what you are trying to show in a few seconds."

I was so excited to get such actionable feedback. As soon as I got the time to do so today, I went back and sat with this feedback and what I had created, and considered why they had suggested it, how to act on it, and how to use it in the future. Then I went back in and made adjustments. I am so happy to now know how to use just one slider/filter for multiple graphs based on the same data. This will declutter everything quite nicely in all my future dashboards. I am happy with my progress!

I thought about getting rid of the old viz entirely and replacing it with the new. However, I think it is a good thing to show publicly how I am learning, and taking feedback and incorporating it. It's good for other people in similar shoes to see me go through this process. In addition, I know I will not be getting hired in a role where I already have all the necessary job skills. Being able to seek out feedback and act on it will be most likely more important than my exact foundational skills in an entry level position.