#TweakThursday 22: Ordering By Narrative

[A sequel to this post: Boosting Stacked Area Chart]

I wrote a post called Ordering By Context before. In a recent Viz of The Day on 11/29/2016, I found that, a conspicuous narrative at the top of the chart, is labeled as "Bottom 90%".

It's like, the narrative says something at right, but the object is placed at left.

Placing the "Bottom 90%" at the top is not consistent with the narrative. So, I decided to move it to the bottom, which is one of the tweaks of the day.

Another tweak is that I added a bar chart in the tooltips.

Note that stacked area chart is always a visual feast. However, its insufficiency, is that, it's hard to compare vertically. Or it is vertically challenged. Having a bar chart in tooltips can help mend it up.

The part I really like is the highlight of the "Bottom 90%" in a different color, in the same manner as one approach I mentioned before.

While researching on this viz, I found that this viz is built on top of a viz created by Andy Cotgreave, which is part of the #MakeoverMonday Week 48 project. (Andy is one of the duos that are behind the #MakeoverMonday movement. What an amazing project! ) I just hope that Andy Cotgreave's credit is acknowledged in some way.

The interactive workbook can be accessed here.

(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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