What’s Inside

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:26 Behind the Scenes
• 3:12 Single Contiguous Dataset
• 3:50 Pivot Tables
• 4:15 Pivot Charts
• 4:24 Slicers
• 4:26 Helper Tables
• 5:35 Step-by-Step Demo

In this article, you’ll learn about 20 stress-free charts that we can make inside spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel.

These visuals can be added to static or interactive dashboards.

They’re fast for us to make… which means a quick turnaround time for your audiences. No need to wait weeks or months until a dashboard is ready! These visuals are made within minutes, so your dashboard is ready same-day.

This is a preview of everything that’s included inside Dashboard Design. This hybrid course includes 9 modules of self-paced lessons along with live Office Hours.

Module 1 is all about planning, deciding what to include, and iterating.

Module 2 involves hands-on practice to create these 20 stress-free charts.

Visualizing 1 Point in Time

In the first lesson of Dashboard Design, you’ll make stress-free charts for visualizing 1 point in time inside spreadsheet software like Excel.

You’ll create:

• (1) Tallies
• (2) Circles
• (3) Filled Squares
• (4) Outlined Squares
• (5) Bars
• (6) Stacked Bars
• (7) Heat Tables

In the Dashboard Design course, you’ll download the file, practice along with me, and pause and re-watch segments as needed. 

You’ll see my Answer Key with the formulas on the left, and you’ll practice in the Your Turn section on the right.

You’ll learn which techniques are best for small n’s vs. big n’s.

​You’ll see case studies of these techniques being used in real dashboards, slides, reports and even as appendices to technical reports.

You’ll hear me talking about “Big A” Accessibility (508/ADA guidelines) as we go, ensuring that your stress-free charts match your existing branding while also being colorblind-friendly and grayscale-printing friendly.

This is a 26-minute lesson; there are timestamps below the video so you can easily rewind or fast-forward. The timestamps making re-watching segments easier for Future You. 

Every video has captions that can be turned on/off. Every video has a full transcript​, too (so you can skim the transcript and see which lessons will be most helpful to you). Dashboard Design includes ~20 case studies in Modules 8 and 9, and nobody needs to watch them all. You can skip around and see which case studies from fellow participants are most applicable to your own industry and workplace.​

Visualizing Exactly 2 Points in Time

In the next lesson of Dashboard Design, you’ll create stress-free charts for visualizing exactly 2 points in time.

These are the charts you’ll need for before/after, pre/post, baseline/endline, etc. dashboards.

You’ll create:

• (8) Slope charts
• (9) Column charts
• (10) Win/loss columns
• (11) Deviation bars
• (12) Checkboxes
• (13) Sort-of checkboxes with squares
• (14) Sort-of checkboxes with circles

3+ Points in Time

Do you collect and share data every week, month, quarter, or year?

These are the stress-free charts that can showcase your time series patterns.

​Inside Dashboard Design, you’ll create:

• (15) Trendlines
• (16) Column charts
• (17) Win/loss columns

Progress Towards a Goal

​Then, you’ll create:

• (18) Checkboxes
• (19) Deviation bars
• (20) Spillover bars

Putting It All Together

​In the final lesson of this module of Dashboard Design, you’ll practice applying all the skills you just learned.

You’ll take this boring, black and white table…

…and transform it into a professional, skimmable dashboard. 

This is the first of many before/after transformations you’ll make alongside me.

Later in the Dashboard Design course, in Module 3, you’ll practice making more of these static dashboards from start to finish. Static dashboards are great for busy, non-technical audiences who just need a 1-pager of key findings. 

In Modules 4, 5, 6, and 7, you’ll make interactive dashboards in Excel.​

Your Turn

Comment here: Which of these stress-free charts are you already familiar with? Which ones are new?

This past year, I’ve spent more time teaching about data management than data visualization.

When I look under the hood of companies’ spreadsheets, I’ve noticed way too many data management issues that could be avoided altogether.

In this article, you’ll learn about a prerequisite for data visualization: contiguous datasets.

Benefits of Contiguous Datasets

In this video, you’ll see how a single contiguous dataset lets you use:

• ONE set of formulas for data cleaning, recoding, and analyses
• ONE set of pivot tables
• ONE set of charts

Then, at the end, you can slice and dice your charts with a variety of filters.

Mini Datasets Spread Across One Sheet – NO!

Here’s what I often see:

Separate datasets for each time period.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sometimes there are dozens of mini datasets, like this:

Mini Datasets Spread Over Multiple Sheets – NO!

Or, just as terrible for graphs and dashboards — one mini dataset per sheet, like this.

NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Or, separate mini datasets spread across different Excel files altogether.

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ann, What’s So Bad about Mini Datasets?!

Separate mini datasets (“non-contiguous” or “non-touching” datasets) mean that we can only look at one time period at a time.

We have to make a bunch of mini charts.

It takes forever to make these the first time, and they’re a huge pain to update over time.

It’s also tougher for our viewers to find patterns because the numbers are scattered across too many charts.

NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dataviz Prerequisite: A Single Contiguous Dataset

Instead, the numbers should be stored in a single dataset, with the timeframe as its own column, like this:

This running list of new entries — a log — is going to get very long.

In real-life projects, the logs might have hundreds of thousands of entries.

That’s okay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s preferred!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s counterintuitive, but contiguous logs make dataviz faster, not slower.

Excel can handle millions of entries.

The length of a dataset won’t make your analysis or visualization take any longer. Repeat after me: Contiguous logs make dataviz faster, not slower.

However…

The width — the number of columns — can certainly take a while, because there are so many different variables to consider.

Bonus: Save Your table as an Excel Table for Easier Updating

A table is the generic term for a collection of rows and columns.

An Excel Table is a special feature that makes it faster and easier to update our log.

In other words, Excel Tables make it easier to append our contiguous logs as we get new data.

How to Turn tables into Excel Tables

You’ll simply click on your contiguous log — your generic table.

Then, go to the Insert tab.

Choose a Table.

Click OK.

You’ll recognize the banded rows.

Adding New Entries to Datasets Stored as Excel Tables

Adding new entries — or appending — is easy.

Let’s pretend you’re downloading data from your organization’s database. You might only be able to download one month at a time into its own sheet. That’s okay!

We’ll simply copy and paste those new entries into our running log.

Then, we’ll add the timeframe to that right-most column, too.

Excel is smart, and it’ll know that your new entries are part of your new dataset. In other words, your new entries will feed into pivot tables and formulas seamlessly.

Contiguous Datasets are Required for Static Dashboards

Want a short handout, PDF, or email attachment to share with others?

Maybe you’d want to see how all the projects combined are doing.

Or, maybe you’d want a breakdown of the different projects.

You could even add quick vizzes like sparklines to see trends, like this:

Contiguous datasets are required in order to make static dashboards.

Otherwise the sumifs, countifs, and averageifs behind the scenes will be impossible. Or, the formulas will be painfully slow to set up.

Static dashboards should take less than an hour to design from start to finish.

If it’s taking longer than that, it’s probably because (a) you don’t have a contiguous dataset or (b) you need more practice with formulas.

Contiguous Datasets are Required for Interactive Dashboards

Want to make interactive dashboards in Excel?

Your technical coworkers will love exploring the insights for themselves.

Interactive dashboards involve four pieces:

1. A single contiguous dataset stored as a regular ol’ table or an Excel Table. You already know I prefer Excel Tables for datasets that are going to be added to or appended in the future.
2. Pivot tables to tabulate the numbers (and bypass formulas, which can be tricky for novices).
3. Pivot charts to, you know, visualize the numbers.
4. Slicers (a fancy name for the filters).

Once again, contiguous datasets are the foundation of data visualization.

Have I sold you on contiguous datasets yet???

Contiguous datasets are required for:

• Making a single graph to show comparisons over time (not January, February, and March in separate graphs that take three times as long to create and update);
• Making static dashboards with formulas and trendlines that’ll update (nearly) automatically as you add new entries to your log; and
• Making interactive dashboards with charts that’ll update (nearly) automatically as you add new entries to your log.

If your data visualization is taking too long… it’s usually a data management problem.

And it can be easily fixed!!!

Start storing all your non-contiguous datasets as a single contiguous dataset.

Sometimes people think that takeaway text isn’t possible for dynamic dashboards in Excel. They worry that they’ll have to write each sentence by hand. False!

In this video, you’ll learn about two ingredients:

• Concatenation: You’ll use the ampersand (&) to join the content from a few cells together.
• Helper Cells: There are pivot tables, helper tables (with lookups), and more concatenation to write out the graph labels.

You can write takeaway sentences about:

• The most or least (the poles)
• The averages
• Anything else you think your audience might be interested in

What’s Inside

• 0:00 Why we need “takeaway text” in data visualization
• 1:26 Two elements needed: Concatenation and Helper Cells
• 1:41 Concatenation in Excel – the Primary Language example
• 2:26 Concatenation – the Months in Program example
• 3:12 Concatenation – the Household Income example with rounding
• 3:46 Concatenation – the Residence map example
• 3:56 Ideas for takeaway sentences to describe graphs: Min and max, mode, etc.
• 4:36 Helper Cells (linked to pivot tables with lookups)
• 5:38 Need more info??

Your Turn

Download this Excel dashboard and follow along: https://depictdatastudio.gumroad.com/l/Demographics-Dashboard

Transcript

Ann K. Emery: [00:00:00] I’m a big fan of takeaway text, takeaway text in reports and presentations, even in dynamic dashboards like this one.

Now, a lot of times people are like, “Ann I love takeaway text too, but it’s n/a for me. I can’t do it because I have a dynamic dashboard. I can only put…” This is what they tell me. This isn’t true though.

“I can only put the topic. I can’t also put the takeaway message because then as people explore the data, I can’t like manually write all these sentences.” Okay. But false. Look at how the takeaway sentences, let me zoom in so you can see this one a little bit better. Look at how they change as they interact with the dashboard.

It’s dynamic. Look, it says 17 people. And then I’m looking at this one right here at 17 people. And then it says 14, and then it says 11. This one changes. This one changes. This one doesn’t change because it’s always English is the most common language in this fictional data set about fictional programs.

Um, [00:01:00] but if it did change, if it was suddenly Farsi or French, that’s what the sentence would say, because look, It’s concatenated, okay? It’s not done by hand. I didn’t, by hand, just type in, like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That would be a ton of work. It would defeat the purpose of an interactive dashboard, right?

It, like, it wouldn’t be possible to write those by hand. So, This is what this video is about. I’m going to show you behind the scenes how you need these two things. Okay. You need to concatenation and you need helper cells, concatenation and helper cells. I’m going to show you the concatenation first, and then I’ll show you the helper cells in a moment.

Concatenation is is a formula. Okay. I’m going to just going to type this one right here so you can see it. It’s a formula. So you start with equals. You say equals the helper cell you would have already set up. That’s over here. I’ll show you this in a moment. Stay tuned. Okay. Equals the helper cell and double [00:02:00] quotes sentence structure, double quotes.

Okay. Helper cell where you already have English selected and Double quotes, sentence structure, double quotes. English is the most common language at this site. Double quotes. Press enter and your sentence structure is written for you. Let me show you this one. Uh, let me move this one down, make a little bit of space.

It would be equals helper cell. Where do I have my helper cell? It would be under the, let’s see how well I labeled this. Okay, under the months in program section with the pivot tables. Here’s a helper table and I’m going to pick this helper cell. Okay. Equals helper cell and that’s concatenation. It joins things from different cells together and quotes sentence structure quotes.

What did I want this one to say? [00:03:00] 14 people, double quotes, space people have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, period, double quotes. Enter 14 people, blah, Okay. Uh, this one is really, really similar. It’s got two helper cells. It’s helper cell, the number and double quotes people at this site. Up to their open parentheses.

When you have parentheses in your sentences, it gets a little tricky too. Cause some of your formulas are going to have. Parentheses. And here’s the other help or sell with the percentage that I had to round. And then I add to multiply to a hundred and then I had to add the percentage symbol, you know, et cetera, et cetera, double quotes at the end.

What did I have in this one? Participants live in and help or sell. So you have to think about what should the sentence say? And in your real life it’s going to be [00:04:00] different. Then these obviously ideas for you, it would be things like calling out the most or the least the polls that makes interesting data stories.

It could be, um, here’s a poll. That’s the most, it could be a big slice, a little slice, something you think your audience might be interested in. Here’s another idea of showing the most like nine people are from Montana. In this site, whichever site is selected here. Okay, that’s concatenation, concatenation, right?

You’re adding helper cells and some sentence structure. It’s joined by the ampersand. The second thing you need is you need the helper cell, right? So it’s over here and I’ll show you, I don’t know, which one should I show you behind the scenes of maybe this one, the language one. So right here, I’ve got a pivot table.

Of the languages. And then I have a helper table because I needed this helper table to [00:05:00] change it from person to people do that on a couple of the charts, right on zero people, but then this one says one person. So a lot of times I’ll do cells like this, so I can have the actual number, but then the graph label right next door.

I figured out how many languages there were. I did a ma, a Simple Max formula. You’ve seen that one before, right? What is the, what is the most, what’s the category the most? And then I did a X lookup to say if it’s 21 is the most, what language does that correspond to? It’s English. Let me know which of this, these techniques you’d like more info about.

Do you wanna hear more about helper tables about. Graph labels that are dynamic about person versus people, XLOOKUP, MAXFORM, I don’t know, you tell me, you tell me and I’ll get through as many of your questions as I possibly [00:06:00] can.

Catch the replay here!

Materials

Follow along with the spreadsheet: https://depictdatastudio.gumroad.com/…

You’ll have to watch the video to get the coupon code. 🙂

There are codes available for the first 500 people.

What’s Inside

0:00 Intro

1:14 The 4 Steps

4:28 (1) Excel Table

12:36 (2) Pivot Tables

18:14 (3) Pivot Charts

20:47 (4) Slicer(s)

24:33 A Gift for You

25:55 Q&A

They’re not supposed to cost an arm and a leg.

They don’t even need to be outsourced to a consultant.

Dashboards are supposed to be fast and easy. We make ’em quickly. We give the numbers to leaders. They make data-driven decisions. That’s it! Stop overthinking it.

In this article, you’ll see examples of real dashboards that you can use as inspiration for your own workplace. No need to start from scratch. Adapt one of these dashboards instead.

Grant Deliverables

In this blog post, you’ll see how Josephine Engels did need to start from scratch — she was visualizing these metrics for her organization for the first time — and then made several dashboards to track grant deliverables.

Josephine writes, “My colleagues have given very positive feedback, as the dashboards have made it easier to analyze their program data more comprehensively. They especially appreciate one-pagers that can be shared with different stakeholders, including board members and program collaborators.”

Board Packets

In this blog post, you’ll see how Kristen Summers used “better storytelling with the same data” to transform a couple packets for her board.

Kristen writes, “This resulted in a much more well-received document with lots of compliments from board members! I have begun creating a cohesive aesthetic for all the documents I produce for the board to give them the information they need but in the most streamlined way possible.”

University Monthly Reports

In this blog post, you’ll see how I transformed a university library’s monthly report.

I write, “The before version only looked at one month at a time… I visualized the percentage of the goal that had been achieved so far… In some areas, the library has already exceeded their goal, so the bars spill past the 100% mark—a cause for celebration!”

Quarterly Monitoring

In this blog post, you’ll see how Shawna Rohrman designed “a prettier and more effective dashboard” with Excel.

Shawna writes, “Even with just these few changes (and using a program nearly everyone can access!), our new performance monitoring dashboard has made it so much easier for our team to review quarterly progress in one place and visualize how our system of early childhood programs are working for children and families in the county. The dashboard has become a quarterly staple at our staff meetings, where we review as a group and use the data to generate next steps. It is also easy to share with senior leadership, so they can see at-a-glance the important work our programs are doing.”

Agency Progress

In this blog post, you’ll see how Danci Greene, Emily Rose Barter, and Britani Baker used “an iterative process to hone the perfect data visualization.”

They write, “[We] recently used an iterative process to turn my agency’s annual goals document into a dynamic visual dashboard… Our iterative process has taken us all the way from a Word document to this dynamic, visual dashboard that uses length and color to bring the numbers to life.”

Revenue and Expenses

In this blog post, you’ll see how “transforming your pie charts into a dashboard – built in good ol’ Microsoft Excel – can be more useful for your organization’s leaders.”

I write, “The pie charts and bar charts above were only giving the viewers a single snapshot in time. To manage effectively, leaders need to monitor trends over time… Viewers should never have to lay two pages beside each other or scroll through documents to make comparisons.”

A Tired Data Table

In this blog post, you’ll see how Mia Schmid revamped a “tired data table” that “did a terrible job of communicating what we needed to know.”

Mia writes, “This is a huge improvement to how we have tracked organization-wide goals! The dashboard is so much easier to read compared to the table format and is a much more engaging way to communicate our progress than merely throwing a bunch of numbers into a table and expecting staff to make sense of it. This dashboard also communicates more than just progress towards goals. When I first put this dashboard together I was struck by how many of our programs either exceeded or under-achieved on their goals for 2017. Goal setting is one area we have been working on with each program and this dashboard has also enabled us to communicate to leadership why appropriate goal setting is so important—achieving a goal by 349% signals to me that the target set by the program is questionable.”

Family Trivia Event

In this blog post, you’ll see how Emily Ross used dashboards “to make a family trivia event even better.”

Emily writes, “I can’t wait to continue to apply the tips and techniques I learned both at work and for fun! Maybe at next year’s trivia I’ll have to test some of the dashboard designs for comparing change over time.”

Learn More

Want to transform your tired tables into effective dashboards? Learn how inside Dashboard Design.