Scenario – You receive this email after submitting findings from an exploratory analysis:
Dear Favorite Analyst at TableauCeutical Inc,
Thank you for sending over the findings from your exploratory analysis. Nicely done!
Now we need to package your exploratory findings into an insights summary deck for our new COO. The insights summary is a PowerPoint deck that allows us to help focus her attention on the most important components of your analysis and ensure she has something tangible to reference in other introductory meetings she is having as meets with other departments.
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 our COO digest whole paragraphs. As you can imagine, COOs have more demands on their time and attention they have hours in the day, so we’ll need to make sure she has the most important information served up in a simple, clean, and concise way. She needs 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 it flows.
If the summary insights go over well, I wouldn’t be surprised if she asks us to build a dashboard for her in the next week or two (Module 5) so she can have the information she needs at her fingertips. As you build the deck, please review the assignment objectives, requirements, and submission expectations below. They are pretty details, but much of credibility stems from following directions.
Please send the slide deck (PowerPoint or Google Slides) along with the packaged Tableau workbook from last week by the end of week (11:59 pm CT on Sunday). PDFs and unpackaged Tableau workbooks won’t be accepted.
Thank you again for your help!
Sincerely,
Lack of Context Leonard
Visually Communicating Insights 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.
Dataset to use for practice assignment (located in Canvas):
M2_PracticeChallenge_SuperDrug
Leverage exploratory findings from TableauCeutical Assignment from Module 2
Assignment Requirements
1. Set-up an aesthetically pleasing PowerPoint (or Google Slides) deck that 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 slides are not required, but you are allowed up to 3 appendix 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_MPractice_InsightsSummary.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 discovered in your Module 2 exploratory analysis 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 more than 3 visuals can be copied and pasted from Tableau, rebuild the visual in PowerPoint so pre-attentive attributes can be leveraged.
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 10 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, June 20.
1. PowerPoint deck as titled in Assignment Requirement 1
2. Packaged Tableau workbook from Module 2 (so final visuals can be compared to exploratory visuals).
