Tango with Tableau

The other night, I got this idea into my head of a cool viz that I could turn into a Tik Tok video. I started telling my boyfriend about it and animatedly waving my hands around, before figuring out how I was going to pull it off. Yesterday, I spent the entire afternoon in Tableau figuring out how to bring it to life.

The reason this took me all afternoon was because I was learning how to use Tableau, while also figuring out how to get it ready for a portrait mode video format. I had only really skimmed Tableau in the course, and so this was a nose dive right in. I had to create a new sheet for each shot of this video, and then put them into a dashboard and export an image one by one. I found it particularly challenging to deal with changing the scales and formats of the bar graphs, because the scale had to increase each time I added a new "week" of learning.

In addition, I had to figure out how to get each photo set up just right so that it would fit my phone screen correctly. Finally, I needed to create the Tik Tok video- and since the song has rapid beat drops that I was trying to time each photo with- this was not easy either! By the time I had finished, I was absolutely buzzing with excitement about the finished product.

After finishing the initial bar graphs, I had the idea to add some additional metrics. This meant going back to the spreadsheet and creating new data, uploading a new sheet, joining it with the prior one, and starting the tableau creation process all over again. Now that I had the hang of how to use the dashboard a lot better, this went significantly more quickly. I know next time I try to use Tableau I will be set up quite nicely!

I will usually review videos a few times and think about them a little before I post them, but I was so excited about this one that I posted it as soon as I was finished. I am so glad that I went through this process of learning tableau, creating this visualization, and making it fun!

After posting my video and my viz I returned to it to review it, and the comments section. I realized right away that I had not been clear about my labels in the x axis. I had simply used the labels "sheets" "SQL" and "R functions". I remembered that I had changed the names in the first versions in order to save space, and had intended to change them back when I finished adding each of the "weeks", but never did. What you see now in my portfolio is an edited version- I went back and adjusted the names for clarity. That was a great learning moment, and I am glad I took the time to do this reflection.