Charting User Growth

How to chart user growth? Sounds like a simple question. Yet I got asked a number of times on the topic. It may not be as straightforward as one might have thought. Seems no one is documenting it. So I decided to write it down.

What is user growth?
- it is not the count of active users per month/week/day and the accumulation thereof.
- it is the accumulation of unique users along time.

It takes 3 steps to do it. We will use the Superstore as the data set for illustration in charting the growth of customers who ordered products from the superstore.

1.Find the first time when the user activity is recorded.

[First Order Date]={fixed [Customer Name]: min([Order Date])}

We will use [First Order Date] as the date axis.

2.Count the first time users

CountD(Customer Name)

3.Calculate the running total of the above count of customers.

Right click the CountD(Customer Name) pill and select the Running Total in Quick Table Calculations.

Voila it's done. Click the image below to access the viz. Included also is a step chart version. Zen Master Rody Zachovich used it in a recent viz. Tableau will integrate it in the coming version 2018.1 already.

(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.

Add a comment

Vizible Difference

In search of data visualization excellence

1. Sheet with a single data mark.

2. Create an show/hide button

3. Add annotations

Add a comment