Aim from day one: Finish on time!
Achieved? No.
Yesterday we were looking at data on what people look for in a partner from YouGov. Quite an open subject, lots we can build with data like this however as ever Andy wasn’t going to make it easy!
To start the day off the data came in a PDF, which is always great *rolls eyes*, but luckily it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. We got off to a quick start, putting the data through Tableau’s built in PDF reader then exporting as a CSV to manipulate in Alteryx. The data prep was done a lot faster than day one and as a result the day felt a lot more relaxed.
Due to my aim from day one I thought early about what I wanted to do, which was a great help, but I didn’t go into detail about what I wanted to do as such… I knew I wanted to look at which countries value money in a partner and see if I could find any insight into why that is. What I didn’t do, is plan the exact visualisations I wanted to use to portray this which lead me to playing with the data in tableau past 6 for the second day in a row.
I don’t feel like this not visualisations would have been such an issue without Andy being Andy, adding additional constraints to make it more difficult. We were told we had to use story mode, which isn’t something I use very often and I feel requires a certain flow to your story to be effective… And so I had to try to make that the case.
Having reviewed my dashboard from day one again, I’m more pleased with it now and think staring at it for an afternoon didn’t help… And so I’m hoping the same is the case with today’s dashboard because once again, I’m not fully convinced! However it meets the requirements, portrays a story, was completed within the time frame (sort of) and looks clean – what more do I want from myself?!
What I’ve learned today: Not to be so hard on myself… Having presented my dashboard from day one to the group and seeing it again with fresh eyes I realise that I’m here because I’m capable, and getting stressed that my work isn’t good enough isn’t worth the time.
