I found the original visualization quite good, so during #WatchMeViz, I spend the hour replicating it. You can see during the video how much time formatting takes, and how I got annoyed about a new bug with colors. In the end, I go pretty close to the original, but some of the highlighting, and particularly the speed of the interactions couldn't be replicated in Tableau; Tableau simply isn't as responsive.

My viz is below the video or check it out here.

The timing of the topic for week 10, To-Do Lists, couldn’t have been more perfect. June 8-14 was the last week in our house in California before our big move across the pond. Needless to say, there was lots to do and lots of lists floating around the house, my wife’s head, and my head.

I decided to take a look at the specific activities I was performing. I ended up grouping them in more general categories to improve the visualisation; I prefer a bit more simplicity in my life as well as my vizzes. I used several methods for data collection this week: Swarm, Moves, Fitbit, Runkeeper, IFTTT, Sunrise Calendar. From there, I looked at a few specific categories:

1. Overall rate of tracking - I was curious to see how much of my time I was actually able to account for.
2. Relocation - I knew I was blowing off packing and the like, mostly because I hate it. The data proved this out.
3. Sleep - Was the way I was feeling overall possibly due to a lack of sleep? I probably should have looked at sleep quality as well, but I didn’t include that data.
4. Family time - Was I spending enough time with my family? This is always a huge priorty for me.
5. Running - I was smack in the middle of marathon training. Was I completing my training? Was that impacting anything else?
6. Work - Tom knew I wouldn’t be working much this week, but would I get ANY work done? 

Given this set of goals, I explored the data in Tableau and created a few key stories. The last two tab in the story are images of the postcard.

Business Insider UK posted this simple chart a couple weeks ago about the change in the amount of time Americans aged 12-17 are spending watching TV.


What struck me most about this choice of chart is how difficult it is to see the trend. Because of its design, your eyes have to move from quarter to quarter, match up the bar colors, then once you hit Q4, go all the way back to the left. This is way too much work for the reader. On top of that, you have to calculate the rate of change in your head.

I created this simple version, very much in the spirit of what I leared at one of Cole Nussbaumer’s workshops.



What I’ve done is:

1. Visualize the entire time period as one continuous line
2. Highlight the beginning and end of the time period
3. Include the rate of change from the start to the end

This view makes the story much, much simpler to see and adds the necessary context. You can download the data here and the Tableau workbook here.

Jay Yarow of Business Insider wrote an article about how US adults are changing their media consumption.  The article included this chart:


The point of the chart is to show how the share of mobile time spent is increasing. But the design of the chart makes that insight difficult. Some of the problems include:

• It's difficult to compare media platforms.
• The data is a time series, yet Jay used bars, which in itself isn't bad, but lines are easier to read.
• The title should emphasize the story more.
• Mobile is the highlight of the story, but it doesn't stand out in the chart at all.

I was able to locate the source data from this article on eMarketer.com and create the alternative below. I learned this style of highlighting the important pieces of the data at Cole Nussbaumer's great public workshop.


Create your own version. Download the data here and the Tableau workbook here.

Time spent online - we all do a LOT of it. Whether it be Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, ESPN, or any other site, the data shows that the average American spends a LOT of time online. Business Insider took a look at this recently with this circular chart: