Reviz-iting my Application Viz

Every data schooler has gone through the same training process, and DSNY2 is no different. One project we’ve all done is to re-vizit our original application viz.

DSNY Applicants: consider these as tips for your own application visualizations! 😉

Goals:

  • To incorporate new data to our visualization, and to specifically the new data prep tools we’ve learned over the past few weeks: Alteryx or Tableau Prep.
  • To implement data visualization best practices we’ve been learning

A little preview of my original viz:

Immediately, there were stylistic changes I knew I wanted to make:

  • Reduce the number of colors being used; there were twelve (12?!) in my original visualization.
  • Reduce the number of text; at the time of building the original visualization, I erred on the side of caution and wanted all insights to be presented in text.
  • Utilize tooltips and increase interactivity! Originally I wanted everything in my viz to be presented as a flat image - this time I knew I wanted to put more complexity in it and the ability to mouse over charts.
  • Giving everything a bit more space by making my dashboard wider.


Enhancing my viz with ✨data✨:

  • I knew this dataset on Open Data NY updates weekly, so the new data I could clean and use was the newest version of this dataset. My original used data from July, and now I had November data to compare to.
  • NYC Jobs (updates weekly)
  • Due to city government employees being public employees, their salaries are posted also on the NYC Open Data site. I wanted to compare the average salary of current employees to the starting salaries in the jobs dataset.
  • Citywide Payroll Data (Fiscal Year)

I’d love to keep working on my enhanced application viz, like giving it some flair and a more inviting intro - but if I’ve learned anything from this project, it’s that vizzes can always be improved!

Author:
Bianca Ng
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