Innovative Tableau

Chapter 20. 3 Ways to Use Dual-Axis Combination Charts: Tip 2

Use a Dual-Axis Combination Chart to Make Your User Part of the Story

For my second way to use a dual-axis combination chart, we re-create a portion of my How does your household income rank? Tableau dashboard:

The visualization features a curve that shows how each household income ranks by percentile. This is a common descriptive view in that it describes high-level statistics. The real value comes by using the second axis to display where the person using the dashboard ranks on that curve. This makes the end user part of the story and provides a much more engaging user experience.

To achieve this effect, we use a parameter that would allow the end user to choose any of the household income options between $2,000 and $450,000. When the user makes a selection, in addition to the descriptive curve, the circle moves to the appropriate place based on that selection. The label also updates with a caption informing the end user of their household income percentile rank.

This is a dual-axis combination chart. The curve for the left axis uses a mark type of Line, and the circle is a second measure that only displays a circle for the end-user’s selection on the right axis. The trick to getting just one circle to show up is a simple formula that computes whether the user’s parameter selection matches the household income value ...