Dashboard Week Last Day

by Giorgia Umani

Here is my last post about dashboard week that summarises what I have learnt, my main difficulties and how I solved them. Overall this week has been very challenging and it has been the time where I have put everything I have learnt so far into facing those challenges. These are the main difficulties I faced this week and how I overcame them.

Difficulty 1: Data Prep

  • Everyday I found myself spending a lot of time doing data prep or going back and forth between Tableau and Alteryx to get the data in the shape I wanted.

How I solved it:

  • Data prep has been quite hard this week since I just wanted to finish the preparation and start producing visualisations in Tableau. However, it its essential to have a good clean dataset, making your job easier once in Tableau. Even though the data prep was challenging, everyone in the DS7 worked as a team and we all supported each other. There is nothing you can’t solve when working in a team!

Difficulty 2: Time Management

  • It was a lot of time pressure to finish a dashboard every day and be ready to present it the day after.

How I solved it:

  • I had the biggest time management problem on Monday but it got better every day. This week I have taken Caroline’s advice to help me with the time management. She advised to choose your story (your dashboard aim) and your audience. Finally sketch your dashboard and answer all the questions needed to reach your aim.

Difficulty 3: Having THE idea

  • Always having a brilliant idea for your dashboard is hard. Everyday you are given a dataset and sometimes you feel overwhelmed by the amount of data or sometimes the good idea just does not come out!

How I solved it:

  • Everyone has that day when you just don’t have a brilliant idea for different reasons but don’t be afraid to go beyond what you already know, you can always learn (especially in Data School!) On Thursday I have learned how to link two dashboards, a thing that has been on my to do list for a long time!