CHAPTER 8
Bringing It All Together With Dashboards
Storytelling is the creative demonstration of truth. A story is the living proof of an idea, the conversion of idea to action.
ROBERT MCKEE1
An essential element of Tableau's value is delivered through dashboards. Allowing the audience to interact with a dashboard and change the details being displayed provides a means to shift context—leading to new and potentially important discoveries. Assembling dashboards in Tableau is fun for the designer and good dashboard design can delight information consumers.
HOW DASHBOARD FACILITATES ANALYSIS AND UNDERSTANDING
When reviewing reports or creating new analytical reviews of data—you are looking for a story—something of value that you can share with others to enable change for the better. Dashboards fortify this storytelling by providing complementary views of the data and turning the data into actionable information that is supported by facts.
Well-designed dashboards are also visually interesting and draw the user in to play with the information, providing details-on-demand that enable the information consumer to understand what, who, when, where, how, and perhaps even why something has changed.
HOW TABLEAU IMPROVES THE DASHBOARD-BUILDING PROCESS
Only three things really matter when it comes to business information—speed, accuracy, and the ability to make a new inquiry. Tableau delivers on all three. Tableau's ability to directly connect to a variety of datasources and render the data ...
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