MYDS Award 2023. Oh, dashboards, my dashboards!
Summing up the results of the DataViz contest
It’s hard to avoid having strong feelings about dashboards — either you love them or you hate them! This incredible product emerged from the convergence of multiple disciplines and has taken many forms, from an airplane pilot’s dashboard to the mobile dashboard of a small branch director, from static displays to interactive ones, and from long, scrolling pages to compact representations of massive amounts of data. Can anyone truly remain indifferent to such an amazing tool?
So what is a dashboard, and when does a dashboard stop being a dashboard? You can agree or disagree with Stephen Few’s long-standing definition of a dashboard as a
“visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen, so the information can be monitored at a glance”
However, there is something fascinating about creating a dashboard and working with it. Perhaps it is what prompts designers to think based on data, and data people to try to make it not only precise but beautiful as well. It makes everyone go beyond their own limits and do even better, even more useful!
Oh, dashboards, our dashboards!
This year, as part of the Make Your Data Speak 2023 dataviz award, we provided participants of Business Dashboard nomination with several datasets and encouraged students and professionals to use their own datasets to create their projects. As a result, a shortlist of our award was collected, which included dashboards of various types — with a classic strict grid and unusual, business-like, and vibrant, with standard charts and complex visualizations!
Also, we had a Data Art & Storytelling nomination — you can read about it here: “MYDS Award 2023. Data tells stories”.
The jury selected winners of Business Dashboard nomination from these entries and two categories — student and professional. You can view the entire shortlist by following the link.
Although it wasn’t an easy choice, the winners were announced at our Make Your Data Speak 2023 conference by Nikita Rokotyan, winner of the World Data Visualization Prize, in the Business Dashboards category, and Pradeep Kumar G, Information is Beautiful bronze medallist.
Tremendous thanks to Nikita and Pradeep for supporting our competition!
And here they are, the winners in the Business Dashboards category:
The winner is Felipe Martins and his Power BI project “World Cups” with football championship statistics since 1930. Felipe has put together an incredibly interesting dataset and presented the data on world championships in an engaging, interactive form!
You can explore his dashboard by following the link, and read the article about the project here!
Second place goes to Sofia Semenova with an HR dashboard in Tableau. This elegant dashboard can easily captivate not only HR specialists, but also any manager. You can explore the project and view it in an interactive form by following the link.
Third place belongs to Natalia Veselova, also with a Dashboard for HR analytics, but in Power BI. Amazing how differently similar data can be presented — here we can see a completely different dashboard structure and set of visualizations! You can view the project by following the link.
Also in the Business Dashboards category were the projects of students, from which the jury selected the winner — Sandra Asage and her HR dashboard in Power BI.
The students’ dashboards are mainly based on educational datasets, but they can easily compete with professional projects. Here you can see interesting solutions, wonderful structure, and color schemes!
You can view Sandra’s project by following the link.
Folorunso Ajala took second place in student nomination with an HR dashboard. This is a neat dashboard displaying the same set of data for HR analytics looks completely different from other finalists! The project was created in Power BI. You can explore the dashboard by following the link.
Karina Romashevsky came third with an HR Analysis dashboard in Tableau. This dashboard is designed for exploring on a computer, and we can see a classic structure and familiar diagrams! You can take a closer look at it here.
The student category is for newcomers, those who do not yet feel confident enough to compete with professionals, but even their projects — although they have some flaws — are very good, and with a little bit of tweaking, they could compete with the professionals!
Thank you for your courage!
So many wonderful dashboards this year, especially in HR analytics — you immediately want to sit down and study the personnel issue, find a few insights, and improve someone’s company from within!
Thanks to all participants for their incredible projects!
Even though this was the debut for the Make Your Data Speak award, we removed the barrier between professionals from different countries. I think that the experiment was a success, so you can prepare your projects for the next award!
Good luck with your dashboards!