The Secret of an Award-Winning Visualization

Today, I want to share my secret to build a winning visualization. But before getting to that part, I just wanted to share some new content.

Last week, I finally released a new YouTube video about the Figma to Tableau plugin. I always have many questions about “How to use it,” and this video should answer almost all of them!

Every time I publish a new visualization or video, I try to learn something new or make it 1% better than the previous one, so hopefully, this will show!

If you like the video, please let me know, but putting an actual like on YouTube is free and does help a lot!

Now to the secret.

Every dashboard needs a CAP.

I have never spent more time thinking about one dashboard than in 2017 for the final of the Iron Viz competition.

If I made it to the final, I trusted my ability to build a dashboard in 20 minutes (even if, at that time, copy-pasting and data preparation were not allowed!). But the challenging part for me was presenting in English and winning an audience (who did not know me) in just five minutes.

So, I looked back at my successful previous work and tried to figure out what worked well.

None of my previous visualizations that were either Viz Of The Day or “award-winning” shared the same colors or style. However, they all had three key elements:

• They are easy to understand: when you first look at the dashboard, you know the topic and what to do.

• They are interesting: the data is presented so that if you don’t know much about the subject, you quickly learn something new.

• They are personal: you can constantly interact with the dashboard to get specific information tailored for you (your country, your interest, etc).

So that was my plan: build a dashboard that is easy to understand, interesting, and personal.

Context: The Big Picture

With only five minutes to win an audience with a dashboard, context is key.

One-third of my dashboard is pure context. Part of that is the title, but I also deliberately duplicated the same simple area chart showing the median house value three times. The only difference is that I highlight the three main periods: the bubble, the crisis, and the recovery.