Finding …. Theme

Unit 2 Assignment: Finding themes using a
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dashboard Milligan Chapters 7, 8, and 11

Unit 2 Assignment: Finding themes using a dashboard Milligan Chapters 7, 8, and 11

In this assignment, you will learn how to combine individual visualizations to find and present a theme

using a dashboard. You will use a mixture of previously created visualizations from Chapter 1 (Unit 1). In

addition, we will ask you to make another visualization. We will also ask you to make a few formatting
changes to the visualizations, and Milligan Chapter 7 will help you with that.

You will build a dashboard after you finish formatting your visualizations. Milligan Chapter 8 will explain
how you build a dashboard. You will use a guided analysis approach since you have completed the

analysis and made the discoveries. Your goal will be to guide your readers through your analysis so that

they agree and understand the insights you found. You need to convince your readers of your

conclusions based on the data insights on the dashboard.

Next, you will build dynamic elements to your dashboard that allow the reader to interact with the
dashboard. You will use filter actions, show/hide features, and sheet swapping to reduce clutter and

focus your reader’s attention on the most critical insights. Milligan Chapters 8 and 11 will help you to

create these elements in your dashboard. You will record a video presentation explaining the dashboard

and demonstrating the use of dynamic elements.

There are four steps in this assignment:

1) Review, create, and format the data visualizations

2) Develop your dashboard

3) Focus attention using dynamic elements

4) Record a video presenting the dashboard

Data set:

1) US State data

Step 1 Review, create, and format the data visualizations

1. Start by finding your file Chapter 1 Tableau Workbook you created in Unit 1 and open the file on
your computer. Note: if you can’t find your file, you can recreate the visualizations from Unit 1,

Chapter 1 Assignment questions 3 and 4 only.

2. Go to File->Save as “Unit 2 Dashboard”.

3. Delete the worksheets from the 2022 NYC Restaurant Inspection data since we won’t use them

(Questions 4-7). If the worksheets are used on a Dashboard in this workbook, you may have to

delete the dashboard first before it will allow you to delete the worksheets.

4. You should have two visualizations, Question 3 and Question 4, remaining. To confirm, Question

3 should be a bar chart by region, and Question 4 should be a geospatial map of the United
States with states of differing colors.

Unit 2 Assignment: Finding themes using a
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dashboard Milligan Chapters 7, 8, and 11

5. Create an additional tree map of the population of each state on a new worksheet within this

workbook. Add Population (2022) as a label. (Forgot how to make a treemap? See Milligan
Chapter 3. For this one, you want to put the Population 2022 on a blank canvas as a color, a size,

and a label, and then the State Dimension also as a label.)

6. Rename your worksheets as something significant to the analysis. For example, the question 3

visualization from Chapter 1 analyzed the 2020 presidential election outcome by region.

7. Look at the color palette for each visualization. If you used the default colors, they might likely
be the same but represent different variables. For example, on the density map, the darker the

colors, the more counties, but on the population treemap, the darker the color, the more

people. Read Milligan Chapter 7 to learn how to change the color palettes on the three
visualizations so they are all different.

8. Change the color palettes so the color on each visualization is different.

Step 2 Develop your dashboard

1. Using a guided analysis approach, you will create a dashboard following the guidance in Milligan
Chapter 8.

2. Create your first dashboard (a tiled approach is recommended because you will add sheet

swapping later in the assignment). Mix the horizontal and vertical containers to fit your
visualizations best. You will probably have to rearrange multiple times.

3. Add at least one text box to include instructions to your reader. You can add a simple title, but

you will add some instructions later.

4. Click on “Presentation Mode” and experiment with your dashboard. What do you notice when

you:

a. Click on a state in the tree map?

b. Click on a state shape in the geographical map?

c. Click on the 2020 presidential election results for a region?

5. You should have seen no link between the visualizations. In other words, clicking on California in
the treemap does not affect the other two visualizations. In the next step, we will add a way to
do this.

6. You can remove the legends from the dashboards since we have included labels in our

visualizations.

Step 3 Focus attention using dynamic elements

Filter Actions

1. This is a guided analysis, so we want our readers to have the ability to interact with the
dashboard dynamically.

2. Set the action filter on the geographical map. Click on the icon on the filter to make it solid on

the visualization in the dashboard. Here’s one example where we have clicked on the Question 4
visualization, and we can see the action filter (note your dashboard may look a little different

from this one.)

Unit 2 Assignment: Finding themes using a
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dashboard Milligan Chapters 7, 8, and 11

3. After you set the action filter, let’s see what changed.

4. Now, click on a state on the geographical map and take note that the other two visualizations

changed.

5. Set an action filter on the treemap as well. You should see the other visualizations update when

you select a box in the treemap.

6. Lastly, set an action filter on the stacked bar chart showing the result of the 2020 presidential
election by region. Again, when you click on an area, it should change the other two

visualizations change.

7. Click outside of the visualization to reset the filter.

Show/hide and sheet swapping

1. Chapter 11 explains how to add a show/hide button to a floating container.

2. This allows your reader to hide visualizations if needed. This could be beneficial if you want to

focus on just one or two visualizations and possibly make one bigger.

Unit 2 Assignment: Finding themes using a
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dashboard Milligan Chapters 7, 8, and 11

3. Another feature covered in Chapter 11 is sheet swapping. When you set up sheet swapping, you

can have one visualization show, such as the map, and then have another one hide, such as the
treemap. Then you can switch back.

4. Experiment with either of these methods and add at least one to your dashboard.

Step 4 Record a video presenting the dashboard

1. Your deliverable will be a three-minute video explaining your dashboard.

2. In your video, you need to explain your three visualizations, demonstrate how the filters work,

and demonstrate either the show/hide or sheet-swapping feature you added.

3. A suggested narrative outline with suggested time frames is here.

a. Greeting to the audience, your name, this class, and this assignment

b. (30 seconds) Assume the audience has no idea what you are going to talk about. Give an
overview. If this were pet food marketing, we might say, “There are millions of pet

owners in the United States. This dashboard is going to investigate where we might

want to market particular brands of pet food in different regions over the time period
2015-2020.” You need to come up with a similar sentence outlining this election, state,

and county data.

c. (60 seconds total) One Visualization at a time:

i. (20 seconds) Walk the audience through your first visualization. If this were pet food

marketing, this might sound something like, “In this first chart, we use a bar chart to
show the different rates of ownership of domestic pets. We can see dogs are the

most popular pet, at 45% of households, and cats are a close second, with 30% of

households having cats.” Note this not only gives the audience the ‘what’ (45% of

households have dogs) but the ‘so what’ (dogs are the most popular). Full credit

answers here will give the audience not only the raw numbers, but also the

takeaway.

ii. Repeat for your second (20 seconds) and your third (20 seconds) visualizations. d.

(60 seconds total) Filters

i. (30 seconds) Go to one of your visualizations and click somewhere on it to filter for a

variable. Again, for the pet food marketing, it might sound something like, “Here, we

click on the state of Minnesota, and we can see that there are approximately 1.5 million

dogs as pets here. If we instead select North Dakota, we see it is about 200,000 dogs,

reflecting a much smaller population in North Dakota.” Again, it’s the ‘what’ (MN has

this many dogs) and the ‘so what’ (dog ownership is tied to population size.)

ii. (30 seconds) Now demonstrate the filter across more than one visualization.

Here is where you filter in one visualization and look at the results in another.

For the pet food marketing, it might sound something like, “Let’s filter on the

reptile category only in this first graph. Now, if we look at this other graph, we

can see that Arizona and New Mexico, despite relatively modest population,
have very large numbers of these sorts of pets. This may be because the hot dry

climate in that region makes it much easier to have a pet reptile.” You want to

Unit 2 Assignment: Finding themes using a
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dashboard Milligan Chapters 7, 8, and 11

choose items which have some sort of relationship to each other. You can do

this for several graphs if you have time.

e. (30 seconds) wrap-up. Pull your entire story together. What should the audience take

away from your presentation? For the pet food marketing, it might be something like

“We can see that the largest pet food market will be in states with high populations for

dogs, but there may be some niche opportunity for less popular pets in smaller states if

we can get the messaging right.” What message do you have for your audience with the
state and election data?

f. Thank your audience for their time and attention.