Data Visualization: Google Looker Studio 101
If you are a beginner and want your data visualization to look like this. Google Looker Studio might be an answer for you!
Today, we’re going to do some visualization with basic tool for beginners provided by Google, called “Google Looker Studio”.
First, we need to have a dataset to visualize. I chose datasets from Thailand’s Department of Business Development (https://www.dbd.go.th/news_view.php?nid=469421794). The dataset contains companies’ information that have been shut down or have just started the business in 2022.
Those who don’t have any data but want to do visualization on here, don’t worry! You can simply use sample data provided for free in Google Looker Studio.
If your data is ready to go, let’s get some work in!
1. Create Blank Report
After you’ve signed in and got to this page, press Blank Report to create a new canvas for our project. It might sound scary to start with “Blank” template but we’re going to start from scratch and I’m sure you can do it, just like me!
2. Import Datasets
This page will pop up after you clicked the Blank Report. Simply choose the source from Google Connectors that your dataset is stored in. I recommend putting the data up on Google Sheets because it’s easier to manage and it allows you to edit the dataset online as well.
3. Add Charts
Once we got our dataset in the workspace, we can get start with our visualization project! You can see my dataset from the right screen with the columns in Thai. It includes companies’ information in the dataset.
What we’re going to do next is counting all the record that we have from the datasets. Simply click “Record Count” from the right window “Data” below our dataset and drag it into our blank canvas on the left.
This is what I’ve got. My dataset contains 98,394 records of all the companies in Thailand that have opened up or closed their businesses in 2022 (This is much more than I expected, tbh). Then, you can style the size and font of this element in the right side after you clicked on the Record Count on the canvas.
After that, you can click “Add a chart” to add the relevant charts you like. I chose Pie Chart to represent the status of the companies since there are both the companies that just started and the ones that stopped running business.
The important thing is to select the dimension and the metric you’re going to use because it’s going to represent the data that we want to visualize. For the dimension, I chose “status” because I want my chart to present about status of the companies and “Record Count” for the metric because I want to count how many companies in those two statuses.
After that, you can change the style of the chart to make it as pretty as you want and Done!
Tada! This is my result. The green in the pie chart below represents the percentage of the companies that have started in the year of 2022 and the red one represents the companied that have shut down during this time.
Bonus: How do we reduce the scope of our visualization? Control Panel is the answer!
Since my dataset consists of all 77 provinces, it’s a bit overwhelming. So, I added a control panel by pressing “Add a control” button and chose type of control panel I want, which is “Drop-down list”.
Once I’ve successfully added the Drop-down list in my canvas, now I could select only the provinces that I want to visualize on this page. In the photo below, I chose only Bangkok and Chonburi, so my pie chart and the record count were a bit different from the one including all the provinces.
