Database Reference
In-Depth Information
In this case, communicating the dashboard involved saving it to Tableau Public (the data is
publicly available), copying and pasting the embed code into my WordPress.org blog, and
socializing it. In your case, you may instead want to switch to presentation mode, turn on the
projector, and begin your eloquent speech. These two modes of delivery are extremely differ-
ent, and both require up-front planning and superb execution. In either case, best of luck, and
be sure to seek out feedback and make improvements for next time.
Finally, check your results. Did your presentation have the desired impact? Did your audien-
ce understand the points you wanted them to understand, and did they take the action you
wanted them to take?
I can't really tell you how to gather this information, because it's highly dependent on the
context of your situation. Polling or surveying your audience, tracking measurable activities
afterward, or just plain asking them what they thought are all potential methods. Use your
imagination, but absolutely be diligent about this step. How else are you going to improve?
Next, let's consider how Dashboards created from this exact same data would be different if,
rather than seeking to empower an audience to ask and answer their own questions in an ex-
ploratory mode, we instead wanted to make two very specific points and explain something
key to our audience.
Building an Explanatory Dashboard
There are many, many insights that could be drawn from the Internet usage data we've been
exploring so far in this chapter. The emergence of the Internet has been one of the most sig-
nificant developments of our time, and has forever changed the face of life on our planet.
Let's consider two different stories we could relate in an interactive Dashboard.
A Key Point to Explain: Nordic Countries in the Lead
One remarkable insight is that a relatively small cluster of countries in Europe known as the
Nordic countries have been at the forefront of Internet usage rates since the earliest days of
the Internet.
Figure 13-33
is a dashboard that was created to illustrate this fact alone.
