Practical Tableau

Chapter 80. Initial Concept

Are you ready to finally start visualizing data? I feel like Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid—making us spend months “waxing on” and “waxing off” before getting to the reason we came here. The truth of the matter is the Identify Business Question, Name KPIs, and Shape Data steps in the INSIGHT framework for data visualization are the foundation required to make your visualizations as effective as possible:

They also make the visualization component itself more efficient, and dare I say fun, because the preceding steps help reduce frustration and potential pitfalls. The strategic thinking put in during the I and N steps inform what should be included in the dashboard and the S step makes working with the data more seamless.

After this groundwork has been laid, you’re ready to create an initial concept for your data visualization.

Creating an Initial Concept

There is no single best way to create a data visualization. There are seemingly endless factors that can influence a dashboard concept, which was actually my motivation behind creating this framework to begin with. If I had to choose the two largest factors though, I would say they are the data visualization’s (a) audience and (b) purpose. These two factors should at least provide a starting point for what your data visualization will look like. When creating an initial concept, think about these questions: ...