Google Data Studio

Introduction

Dashboarding is easy with Google Data Studio. Google Data Studio helps you import, manipulate and display your data in an easy to understand way. If you know Google Data Studio, you’ll also find other popular data analytics tools such as Power BI (Microsoft), Tableau and Qlikview easy to learn.

The slides for the data visualisation / business intelligence workshop can be found in: WORKSHOPS: Business intelligence tools

What to consider when doing BI

A part of data analysis that must not be taken for granted is how to convey the content correctly. This is where BI tools become extremely powerful. They focus on creating interactive dashboards to convey the data in a report-type fashion. The use of various elements helps you not just show the data but gives focus to the report and ‘tell a story’. Making it interactive allows you to generate insight and allows the audience to interrogate the data easily.

These a few things you should consider when making a dashboard:

  • Does the report have a page title and graph titles? This allows the audience to understand what the dashboard is focused on rather than questioning you about every element.
  • Are the graphs visible? Make sure the graphs not only contain the correct information but are also easy to read. This includes titles, colours, and the type of graph for the information.
  • How many graphs are on the dashboard? Too many graphs can lose focus - too little may not tell the whole story. Ensure you know what you are building and what you want to show on the dashboard.
  • Is there any interactivity that the dashboard can benefit from? Do you need filters that can help navigate the story? Can you use a graph to filter out another graph? These are aspects that usually come into question while you are building your report.
  • Your ‘story’ may be spanned over multiple dashboards. Some dashboards have a single focus while others could continue a story from a previous dashboard especially if there is a lot to show. Make sure you can navigate easily to them and the audience knows this. Titles can really help how these two dashboards are linked.
  • Look and feel is important. Make sure the colours are correct, background images, graph types, graph colours, labels etc. all work together to create a visually compelling report.
  • Know your data. Use the tool to understand the data you have and how you can create new fields to enhance the information. This takes practice and experience and will come through design - sessions with peers and others.
  • Future proofing is an underlying goal. Make sure your work isn’t temporary, it can be updated and enhanced to meet the needs of the future. This includes the processing mechanism of your data. It may not always come in the form you need. You must ensure you process your data correctly before you visualize it in order to convey the most value as easily as possible. This may also be easier if the data provided to you can include some other fields before your import, so that the ‘raw’ data file has the information in a more useable format.
  • Understand your audience. It is important to make sure you design the report correctly for the users – so multiple design sessions and continuous testing is key to ensuring usability and a higher utilization rate.

These are just a few considerations when building a report and this list will grow as you gain more experience.

Google Data Studio Documentation

Documentation for using Google Data Studio can be found here. Thank you Darshik for providing this documentation!

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