Just wrote a post on back-to-back chart tweaks last week in my #TweakThursday series. This week's #MakeoverMonday project presents a dataset in which we can apply the technique. The idea is to provide back to back comparison at a lower level of details. This is to make up the shortcoming of the back-to-back chart, where the comparison at lower level is not obvious.
So here you go
When mouse hovering over the chart, you will see the detailed comparison at the gender level in the tooltips.
One curious thing is, when published to the server, we see some horizontal lines in the solid color area. I already set the transparency to be 100%. Still the lines won't go away. Let me know if you know how to fix it.
Since I try to follow the KISS rule (Keep It Simple and Stupid) this time, as promoted by Andy Cotgreave, I got time to create another simple version as follows. If you have a preference, I would love to know.
Here is the one with visual tooltips.
Click the above images to go to the interactive version.
PS. I agree 100% with the KISS rule. In practice, we are required to turn out data analysis quickly, even though the look and feel is not graphically great. Some boring bar chart or line chart can save the day. So the most important requirement is turnaround time. Then, we can improve the graphics as the project goes. We are data analyst, not graphical designer after all.
In the other hand, personally I like simple chart which is to make one point per chart. It will be easy to read and understand. Too much information cramped into one chart may be confusing.
(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.)
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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