#TweakThursday 2: Ordering by Context

Last week I made my first #MakeoverMonday entry. It is about a data set of Global Temperature 1850-2016. Among all the entries, one was outstanding and won the Tableau Viz of the Day award. It is a simple yet elegant design by Neil Richards, way better than what I did. I downloaded it and tried to animate it, like what I did in my own entry.

As the year started to play, I found something strange. The marks got populated from top to bottom. I immediately realized the year axis (vertical) needs to be reversed. After the reversal, the higher temperatures and later years are on top. After all, we are supposed to raise awareness that the temperature is getting higher visually as year goes by. That's the tweak.

Although there is no right or wrong ordering, we could choose the one that sharpens the point of view we try to communicate to the audience. So there is a more suited ordering than the other depending on the context. A simple design choice may change the degree of impact significantly.

After the tweak: (click images to go to the interactive version)

The original is as follows:

(Refresh the page if you want to view the gif image multiple times. Or go to Tableau Public and click the button at the top-right corner.)

Jake and I collaborated on a dashboard. He told me that he learnt a way to create an in-place help page in Tableau. He first saw it at a conference somewhere and couldn't recall who the speaker was. So I am blogging here about it but the credit goes to somebody else. If anyone knows who the original creator is, leave a comment below.

The key idea is to float a semi transparent worksheet on top of the dashboard, where a help text box is strategically placed on top of each chart. This way, we can explain how to view each chart and what data points are important, etc. This worksheet is collapsible by a show/hide button.

Below I would like to show how this worksheet can be constructed.

1. Sheet with a single data mark.

Double click the empty space in Marks panel and add two single quotes. Make the null pill a text label. This creates a single null mark.
Set the view as "Entire View"

2. Create an show/hide button

Go to the target dashboard
Drag a floating vertical container to the dashboard, making it cover all the area of interest.
Drag the Single Null Mark sheet and drop it into the above container. Hide the sheet title.
Create an open/close button for the container and place the button at the top-right corner.

3. Add annotations

Format the sheet background opacity as 70% in the layout manager
Select area annotations and place them anywhere of interest.
Write help text and format it to highlight important messages.
The text can serve as functional guide and/or insight guide.

Here is an example. Feel free to download the workbook and explore. Click the "i" button at the top-right corner to view the in-place help.

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Vizible Difference

In search of data visualization excellence

1. Sheet with a single data mark.

2. Create an show/hide button

3. Add annotations

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