Makeover Monday, 2019 #26

An interesting and deceptively simple data set on alcohol consumption by country for 2019 week 26. I like the simplicity of the table of data and the factors affecting the top 25 that are discussed in the article. The chart itself would be better as bars not columns in my opinion, allowing the country names to be laid out for easier reading. As Eva noted in her submission showing liters of pure alcohol consumed per capita per year isn’t that easy to relate to. Digging into the definitions for standard drinks / units I was surprised to find that there is quite a range, and that some countries still don’t define a standard drink. I decided to focus on that aspect for my makeover. ...

June 26, 2019 · 1 min · Steve

Makeover Monday, 2019 #3

Andy Kriebel selected a data set about US workers paid at/below the minimum wage for those choosing to participate in week 3, 2019. The original viz highlights some of the regional differences for 2017 by showing the data geographically. I like that I can see regional differences, but I found myself wanting to see the trend over time (as it’s available in the data set) to see if the geographical trends are part of an ongoing story. ...

January 15, 2019 · 1 min · Steve

Makeover Monday, 2019 #1

Makeover Monday 2019 week 1 looks at NHL attendances since the 2000-01 season. A couple of things emerge from an exploration of the data set provided: firstly there are seasons where labour disputes, or lockouts, dramatically affect attendances. Secondly some teams have different stories to the general trend. I spent most of my time exploring and presenting the lockout story, but added a team selector to allow users to explore average game attendance by team. ...

January 4, 2019 · 1 min · Steve

Leading with questions

I was preparing for our company celebration of CX Day 2018 on Tuesday and was reminded of this great interview with Warren Berger on the IDEOU site. The interview drills into the power of questions, and how the right question can lead to a breakthrough and real innovation. The bit that sticks out for me is the question that led to the Polaroid instant camera: ...

October 7, 2018 · 1 min · Steve

Copy and paste text boxes in Tableau

Christina Gorga recently commented on Twitter that she would love the ability to copy or duplicate text boxes on Tableau dashboards. The tweet attracted favourable attention, with 44 likes. One reason the feature is seen as useful is that it could reduce the time taken to copy formatting throughout a dashboard; styling like fonts, sizes, colours, borders. How much of a pain is it to reapply these to multiple text boxes? ...

September 1, 2018 · 5 min · Steve

Makeover Monday, 2018 #35

A couple of my colleagues are giving Makeover Monday a go to practice some recent Tableau Desktop training, so I’m back into it too! This week we were given a data set from Figure Eight about wearable tech products, with the challenge to makeover the charts in this article from 2014, about where we are wearing our wearable tech. ...

August 31, 2018 · 1 min · Steve

Makeover Monday, 2018 #22

Where is some of the worlds priciest residential property? For week 22 of #MakeoverMonday we look at a World Economic Forum chart trying to answer that question. On first glance the chart is nice and clear, but is a tree map the right type of chart to use when we’re not looking at parts of a whole? A number of community members have suggested it is not, and for me that detail shouldn’t be left to the chart footnote just in case the chart is used in a standalone setting. The sort order of the areas isn’t super intuitive either, with the most expensive city in the top right. ...

May 28, 2018 · 1 min · Steve

Makeover Monday, 2018 #21

How accurate were the Guardian Sports writers’ predictions for the 2017-18 English Premier League? According to this visualisation, which was picked for week 21 of makeover Monday, the predictions were not that great. I decided to have a play with removing inaccurate predictions; after all once you get one wrong you’ll end up with at least one other prediction wrong too right? E.g. getting first and second the wrong way around. I was intrigued to see if the Guardian had more of the sequence correct than it seemed at first glance. Arguably they did have more right – 11 was the number I got to. ...

May 26, 2018 · 1 min · Steve

“Yes, and”, Cirque du Soleil and innovative design

On a recent holiday we got to go to a Cirque du Soleil show. The show was “O” and you should seriously consider checking it out if you ever get the chance. Absolutely amazing! Aside from being thoroughly entertaining, for me the show reinforced some recent experiences around innovation and creative leadership that I’d picked up from companies like Empathy Design and IDEO. ...

April 19, 2018 · 3 min · Steve

Makeover Monday, 2018 #13

I’m returning to #MakeoverMonday after a month or two off with family and travelling. After completing all 52 in 2017 I’m pretty relaxed about how many I participate in this year, and hope to pick up on some other community initiatives, like viz for social good. Anyway back to this weeks makeover… In week #13 the challenge was to makeover the first chart in this infographic about chocolate bar preferences in the UK. I enjoyed the original infographic and found the bump chart interesting. It took me a little while to reconcile that the bump chart plotted preferences across age brackets not years. I like the way the lack of data for some brands has been handled, although that does add to the complexity of the chart. So for my makeover I’ve simplified it down to simple lists of rankings. I’ve coloured the items by manufacturer as I think this tells the story about Cadbury more effectively for the audience. ...

March 27, 2018 · 1 min · Steve