The video (from 3:15 to 5:14) shows Hans Gosling describing how countries have trended in terms of Population, Fertility Rate, and Life Expectancy at Birth between 1962 and 2003. Gosling used a software called Trendalyzer to create the animated bubble chart he used in his presentation. The current version of the software (now called Gapminder Tools) is a completely free web app that is available at www.gapminder.org.

This type of visualization is relatively simple to recreate in Tableau. All that’s really needed is to add a Year field on the Pages shelf.

Concepts/Features:

• Tableau Animation
• Data Blending
• Screen Recording

The Dashboard:

Click the link below to download the Workbook file plus the data I used for this dashboard.

I do have the dashboard published on my Tableau Public profile. However, the main feature of this dashboard, i.e., the ability to animate changes over time, is currently limited to the desktop versions of Tableau (Tableau Desktop or Tableau Public). As you can see from the embedded version below, the playback buttons are gone. You can’t automate the animation; you can only manually change the slider to see the changes by year.

Update: Playback buttons have been added to Tableau Public as of 02/24/20 (ver. 2020.1). The following embedded dashboard now have the button to let you automate the animation. The ability to control the speed, however, is still limited to the desktop version.

If you don’t have either of the desktop versions, I prepared a set of screen recordings showing how the dashboard functions.

The bubble chart describes three metrics: population size, fertility rate, and life expectancy at birth. Each bubble is a country, and the size of the bubble corresponds to the country’s population size at a given year. The color of the bubble corresponds to the region that country belongs to. For example, the light green bubbles are the South Asian countries while the blue bubbles are the North American countries. Fertility rate is shown on the x-axis while life expectancy is shown on the y-axis.

The dashboard is ridiculously simple to the operate. To start the animation, click the button. If you would like to see the changes in reverse, simply click the button. The animation is set to loop continuously. If you would like to stop the animation, click the button. The buttons let you control the speed of the animation.

If you would like to see how certain regions trended as group over time, you can use the color legend on the right to highlight them. Do note that you can select more than one region. In the video below, I selected the Sub-saharan African countries and pressed the button to see how these countries trended over time.

If you click on a bubble on the chart and then played the animation, the bubble will leave a trace as it moves forwards in time. In the video below, I selected China by clicking on its bubble and then played the animation.

Note that you can select more than one country if you wish. However, I don’t recommend doing so if you’re selecting bubbles that are close to each other. I don’t recommend this for two reasons: 1.) it will be harder to follow each individual country because the traces will crisscross, and 2.) the more bubbles you select, the slower the animation is. The slowdown might not be a problem for you if you’re using a higher end computer. In my case, I’m using a mid-range computer and the slowdown is very noticeable.

Finally, you can use the Country input box on the right to highlight a particular country. This is particularly helpful if you would like to focus on a single country but you don’t which bubble it is on the graph. In video below, I used the input box to find India in the chart. I then selected it to have leave a trace as it moves. Finally I clicked the button to play the animation.

This was really cool to make. This is essentially just a short example of how to use the Pages shelf in Tableau. I am a little bummed that the playback functionalities disappear when uploading to Tableau Public. I hope you had a chance to download and open the Workbook file so you can see the animation as intended!

Financial Review of Startups

Note: The dashboard is optimized for a 1080p monitor or better. It is currently not optimized for mobile viewing. For reference, I was using this monitor while designing the dashboard.

You can see an embedded version down below.

The Task:

“You have been approached by a Venture Capital Fund. The Board of Directors are currently reviewing 1,000 potentially interesting startups and deciding on which ones they are going to invest in.

The criterion for selecting investments for this fund is a combination of:
– High Revenue (2015)
– Low Expenses (2015)
– Top Growth (2015)

Your task is to assist the Board in identifying which businesses represent the best investment opportunities.“

Concepts / Features:

• Groups and Sets
• Combined Sets
• Parameter Controls
• Reference Lines
• Action Filters & Highlights
• Dashboard Buttons

The Idea:

For this task, I assumed that Board of Directors wanted a dashboard that would allow them to explore these potential startups, as opposed to me telling them which ones they should invest in. My goal was to create a dashboard that would allow the user to play around with some parameters, change the visualization as they see fit, and let them derive some insights themselves.

The Dashboard

In creating this dashboard, I decided to focus on the 3 metrics that the Board specified. The data provided includes more information that what was required. While it may have been interesting to see some of these other metrics on the dashboard, I assumed that Board only want to see those metrics that they specified.

There are three parameter controls on this dashboard: Expenses Cutoff, Revenue Cutoff, & Growth Cutoff. Expense Cutoff controls the horizontal reference line and defines the maximum 2015 expenses a startup must have in order to be considered by the Board for investment. Revenue Cutoff controls the vertical reference line and defines the minimum 2015 revenue a startup must have to be considered. The purple data points are those startups that satisfy both requirements, i.e., those that are in the upper-right quadrant. This quadrant is defined as the Target Quadrant in the dashboard.

The Growth Cutoff parameter control defines the minimum 2015 growth rate a startup needs to have to be considered for investment. The pink data points are those startups that satisfy all three requirements (i.e, had a total expense less than the Expense Cutoff value, had a total profit more than the Revenue Cutoff value, and had a growth rate greater than the Growth Cutoff value).

If a user would like to see more details about a particular startup, they can do that by selecting the startup in the scatter plot and clicking on the “Click Here to see…” link. Doing this will bring them to a table containing more information about the selected startup.

This also works if they would like to select multiple startups.

If instead the user only wants to see information on startups that are inside the target quadrant, they can do this quickly by clicking the button on the top-right corner of the scatter plot. Doing this will bring them to a table containing a more detailed description of each startup in the target quadrant.

Room for Improvement:

The main thing I would like to work on is creating a mobile version of this dashboard. I would like to create a version that is optimized for mobile viewing. Unfortunately, I neither have a laptop nor a tablet, so this task is currently on hold.

I would also like to implement a feature that would instantly filter the dashboard by top or bottom startups with respect to a specified metric. I’ve actually created a prototype using a different type of visualization. Check it out down below.

Click the link below to download the data used for this dashboard.

I highly suggest that you check out the dashboard on Tableau Public. Embedding a Tableau Dashboard into a WordPress blog is a bit tricky – the resolution tend to get out-of-control. By viewing the dashboard on Tableau Public, you’ll have a better chance of viewing it the way I intended it to be viewed. And again, currently it is not optimized for mobile devices. Please use a 1080p monitor or better.

To see my other dashboards and visualizations, click here to see my Tableau Public profile.