I did my first ever Hackathon and it felt Awesome!
Hey There!
This being my very first blog post, I’ll start with a small introduction. I was first introduced to Tableau back in 2015 by one of the Tableau Ambassadors — CJ. A daily visit to the Tableau public gallery soon sparked a lot of interest towards the tool. However, my graduate program curriculum during the time kept me busy and I could only rarely tap into visualizations once in a blue moon. It wasn’t until late 2016 that I started putting in time and effort into data visualizations.
Why Hackathon?
Although, late to the Tableau game I am trying to slowly pick up the art of storytelling, one page at a time. My beginner level status with tableau had always made me look for resources to practice and learn the tool. You can see me regularly involved with ‘MakeoverMonday’ every week, (I would like to take a moment to thank Andy Kriebel and Eva Murray for putting this together) when Tableau announced their hackathon, I was more than excited to make use of this opportunity for the very same reason — practice!
If you haven’t heard already, Tableau recently kicked off their first ever hackathon and the response from the community has been phenomenal. A quick search on Twitter with #HackingOpenData and you’ll know what I mean.
Briefly, the hackathon consisted of five teams, participants were to enroll under a single team as a duo. Each team represented a topic namely Energy, Climate, Agriculture, Government and Education.
The challenge was to dig into the raw, unstructured data (open data) and come up with an informative visualization. The choice was easy for me, given how much I admire CJ’s work, I enrolled into ‘Team Energy’ without a second thought. The information on the rest of the teams and their leads can be found here.
Experience —
I did not have a duo myself and was relying on organizers to pair me up with my fellow participants. This paired participation was one of the reasons why this hackathon was an exciting opportunity. I was looking forward to interacting with others who use tableau, learn a thing or two about their thinking process, their style of visualization and how they tackle everyday data problems.
The experience with Tableau and their team has been praiseworthy. This was my first time reaching out to them for help and the support from the Tableau Public team was really encouraging. Shoutout to Cynthia for her constant follow ups and support all throughout.
After an initial hiccup, I was finally paired with ‘Sumeet Bedekar’. I was sure it was a great combination as soon as Sumeet greeted me in ‘Hindi’! Despite the time difference, we were able to co-ordinate and compile our ideas. It was great working with him and understanding his approach towards a dataset. We spent a day or two in the data wrangling and design process and finally spent a couple of hours constructing it in Tableau.
Approach —
I dragged myself onto Twitter recently. Given the feedback and warmth people show for your work, it should have been a no brainer in the first place. However, it is a scary place to be. With the BATMANs and IRONMANs of the tableau world, doing all sorts of cool stuff, it sometimes is easy to get carried away with an itch to do something cool and something beyond your superpowers.
I have been through days where I sat in a corner and vanished into the dark. I still do. Few of these book recommendations from Zeus (finished just one so far — getting there) are helping me wire my brain and get my basics right. The Tableau community often encourages the ‘KISS’ concept while designing a story. I am convinced that until you get the storytelling right, the design wizardry should take a backseat. (that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try cool stuff like this) Rody recently wrote a post on his resurrection which sums up my brain’s dilemma pretty well.
Luckily, both Sumeet and I were on the same page on this thought process. So keeping our skill levels in check, we wanted to focus a lot more on the story telling aspect. It’s the story that matters after all. We knew we wanted a simple yet effective visualization. When looking around for inspiration we came across Amanda’s work on climate change. Inspired by her work we went ahead designing ours, more on this later.
Personal Favorites —
“Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to you as well. — Voltaire”
I was really excited to see so many cool visualizations from the hackathon. Some of my favorites were
What I like —
THE SIMPLICITY OF THE VISUALIZATION. The information has been cleverly shown to the audience in innovative and pleasing ways. The colors are very subtle and the story stands out. The explanation of the legend is beautifully done. The grid layout and the colors chosen in the line charts are all very clean.
What I like —
Two things that standout to me in this visualization are — THE BRILLIANT LAYOUT of information and THE ATTENTION TO DETAIL. I often struggle to produce effective viz work where despite being busy, the information is clear enough, this one does just that. The colors are consistent and compliment each other. Love the visual elements as well.(solar panels and the cables that point information). Hexagonal border is a nice touch.
What I like —
GREAT CHOICE OF COLOR, eye catchy and yet not over-powering The icons are very neatly done. The bar charts are a definite standout and the layout is very well structured and I like how the information flows left to right.
What I like —
The layout is really well done. EACH SECTION IS PRECISE AND CLEARLY NARRATES THE STORY. I love the section dividers and icons used to convey the topics. The color options chosen are very subtle and yet there is a clear differentiation. This was the only other(apart from ours) infographic style visualization and this dynamic duo nailed it!
I had to restrict myself to four favorites as I wanted this to be a short read. This hackathon brought together some amazing talent and shed light on various intriguing topics. Be sure to check out all of them on Twitter.
Random Thoughts —
Data preparation can get very frustrating, specially when dealing with unstructured data. Compiling multiple sources together and making use of required fields can be a tedious task. Luckily, I had a life saver — Alteryx. I was first introduced to Alteryx recently when I had enrolled into a Nanodegree program.
Tableau + Alteryx on a Mac = ❤️
Most of the data wrangling needed for our visualization was done using Alteryx. I usually prefer having all my data ready before importing my files into Tableau. I cannot express how much I started liking working with these tools. But sadly my license for Alteryx ends soon. “These violent delights have violent ends” after all. I would miss working with the tool primarily for two reasons
- For the sheer convenience the tools give you to wrangle and clean the data.
- It’s a shame that I haven’t explored the tool to its full potential, I’ve touched ‘just’ the tip of the iceberg.
Finally, I present to you our work from the hackathon! Our visualization primarily talks about the electrical energy in India. We chose to show the progress over the years, where each section talks about a particular year. We wanted to go with a newspaper like theme and hence the black and white color options. We did receive some very good feedback for our work.
“On the whole I love the viz. It’s really well designed and has a great flow and commentary — Chris Love”.
“This is a really nice infographic and story. Really good work — TheDataDuo”
“A very nice example of a long and tall dashboard telling with an engaging story of Energy in India! Great Work — Corey Jones”
It was encouraging and reassuring to hear such good words from the Tableau Zen Masters themselves. Feedback is one thing that keeps us grounded and pushes us to learn. This hackathon turned out to be a very good learning experience and is definitely one of those events to be a part of.
What did you think of our work? What did you like? Where can we improve? We would love to hear your feedback.
Thanks for hearing me out! Hope to see you all in the second round of #HackingOpenData
Share similar thoughts? Connect with me on Twitter —@AmarendranathD
PEACE.
