Tableau Refining

Sprint 4: Modules 7-8 Artifact Refining your insights summary from modules 5-6 (100 points)

Scenario - You receive this email after submitting findings from an exploratory analysis:

Dear Favorite Analyst,

Thank you for sending over the first iteration for your insights summary, I’m excited about the progress you

are making. We need to continue refining the visuals and story to make sure it’s ready distribution to the

Senior Leadership team. Unfortunately, we will not have the opportunity to present the findings in a live Q&A

session so all of your insights need to be included in an artifact that can be read and easily understood without

having to be there to explain things.

Unfortunately, simply taking screenshots from Tableau won’t give us the professional, camera-ready aesthetic

we need to communicate. Many, visuals will likely need to be rebuilt so we can have more control over the

final look. We’ll want to add text annotations to further explain what the visual is communicating, but without

making people digest whole paragraphs. As you can imagine, senior leaders have more demands on their time

and attention they have hours in the day, so we’ll need to make sure they have the most important

information served up in a simple, clean, and concise way. They need to be able to consume the insights in

less than 10 minutes, so we’ll need to be deliberate about what we highlight, what we deemphasize, and how

the insights flow together.

Since we don’t have actual business context behind why this dataset was originally pulled together, we may

have to make assumptions about what’s at stake and why.

As you refine the deck, please review the assignment objectives, requirements, and submission

expectations below.

Please send the updated slide deck (PowerPoint) by the end of week (11:59 pm CT on Sunday); late

assignments will not be accepted. PDFs will not be accepted.

Thank you again for your help!

Sincerely,

Lack of Context Leonard

Refined Insights Summary Artifact Assignment Objectives:

I. Demonstrate you can minimize unnecessary cognitive load by

a. using consistent formatting (punctuation yes or no, font size, color, annotation methods,

spacing, indentation, etc.)

b. eliminating clutter (chart borders, gridlines, data markers, clean-up axis labels, labeling data

directly instead of legends & matching color, non-strategic use of contrast, etc).

c. eliminate distractions (misalignments, blurry pictures, unnecessary complexity, wordy, etc.)

II. Demonstrate that you can focus your audience’s attention by

a. Creating a visual hierarchy to follow

b. Leveraging pre-attentive attributes in your graphics (orientation, shapes, line length, line width,

size, curvature, added marks, enclosure, hue, color intensity, special position, motion, etc.)

c. Leveraging pre-attentive attributes in your text (color, size, case, outline/enclosure, bold, italics,

spatial separation, underline/added marks).

III. Demonstrate that you can communicate insights by combining visual elements with concise text and

annotation.

IV. You’ve had 6 weeks to become familiar with the dataset and have harvested insights from your

exploratory analysis, dashboards, and first insights summary. When I grade the slides from your

refined insights summary, I will review them side-by-side with your first draft slides. I should see clear

improvement in your use of pre-attentive attributes, avoidance of chart clutter, proper use of contrast,

consistent formatting, clean slide backgrounds, etc.

V. If you simply resubmit the slides from your original insights summary, you will fail this assignment

Dataset to use for practice assignment (located in Canvas):

Leverage exploratory findings from TableauCeutical or Bookshop datasets from Modules 1-4

Assignment Requirements

1. Refine the PowerPoint deck to ensure it is aesthetically pleasing and contains a title page, executive summary,

insights slides, and an appendix (10 points)

a. Title page must look different than content pages and must contain a title, your name, course section title, and term.

b. Executive summary is to be no longer than 1 page

c. Minimum of 5, but no more than 7 insight slides

d. Appendix section must be clearly labeled using a slide the looks different than your insights slides and similar to, but

not the same as your title slide.

e. Appendix section must contain 3 slides

f. Max size of 13 slides; title page (1), executive summary (1), insight slides (7), appendix cover (1), appendix slides (3).

g. Saved you deck as FirstName_LastName_M8_RefinedInsightsSummary.pptx

h. PDFs will not be accepted.

2. Executive Summary Slide (10 points)

a. Summarize the key findings from each of the 5-7 insight slides on one page in bullet point form with no visuals.

b. Leverage pre-attentive attributes in your bullet points (assignment objective II.c)

c. Provide details about the dataset, methodology, & assumptions, as footnotes (data dates, calculations, records not

used because they weren’t clean/complete, etc).

d. Executive summary is to be no more than 1 page.

3. Insight Slides (60 points)

a. Minimum of 5, but no more than 7 insights slides

b. Insight slides must contain a headline statement that communicates the most important thing the reader should take-

away from the slide (in case they’re skimming it)

c. Communicate insights in a clear, concise, and visually engaging way.

d. Use pre-attentive attributes to call attention to the insights displayed in your visuals while deemphasizing or

eliminating clutter (assignment objective II.b)

e. No visuals in the main section (insights slides section) can be copied and pasted from Tableau, rebuild the visual in

PowerPoint so pre-attentive attributes can be leveraged. Tableau screenshots are only acceptable in the Appendix.

f. Use text annotations to enhance your visual by adding context, communicating findings, connecting the dots to other

findings on other pages, etc.

g. Ensure the reader can understand the structure of your visual by labeling axes and communicating the data being

graphed. This can be in a sub header or as a chart title.

h. At least 2 slides should contain more than 1 visual from your exploratory analysis (you built several exploratory visuals

but are only allowed 7 insight slides so it’s good to practice fitting more than one visual onto a page without

overwhelming the reader).

i. Provide details about the insight, methodology, & assumptions, as footnotes (data dates, formulas, records not used

because they weren’t clean/complete, etc).

j. Insight slides should have similar theme, but not have the exact same structure from page to page. I.e. font size, color

choice, how insights are highlighted, etc. should be consistent. However, don’t always put the chart on the left and the

text on the right or the chart on top and the text below. Don’t always have just one graphic with bullet points.

4. General Aesthetics & Content Flow (20 points)

a. Ensure the deck is free of grammar, spelling, alignment, and formatting issues.

b. Ensure the deck flows naturally from topic to topic (don’t summarize one topic go on to another then come back to a

previous topic, etc).

c. Ensure the deck is free of inconsistent theming (assignment objective I.a)

Submission Requirements

Upload the following to Canvas by 11:59 pm CT on Sunday at the end of Module 8

1. PowerPoint deck as titled in Assignment Requirement 1