Maven LEGO Challenge (January 2024)

This is my submission for the Maven LEGO Challenge and my first Power BI dashboard.

The Task...

is “to piece together an interactive dashboard or visual that lets users explore the history and evolution of LEGO sets from the past 5 decades”, so I decided to go with the theme literally and built a 2-page report: “Piece by Piece” & “LEGO evolution”.

• “Piece by Piece” is a gamified concise version of the LEGO history where the user needs to complete the story by selecting the correct year of release or a title of a set. When the correct answer is selected a “piece” is populated with an image and a short description.

• “LEGO evolution” is a dashboard where the user can explore the LEGO history and arrive at the correct answers.

The Data…

I used the provided data about the LEGO sets released between 1970 and 2022 to build the dashboard and created a helper table to use for the gamified history.

I. Data Cleaning & Transforming - I completed this step in Excel and applied the following:

· Handling missing values – treated the missing values in the “pieces” and the “minifigs” columns as “0” assuming that if there is no value, it means that there are no pieces/minifigures in this item. For example, an item from the book category is not expected to have any pieces/minifigures (although some have a few!);

· Creating variables - added the following columns:

· “set_ID#_new” - extracted the set_ID# from the "bricksetURL" because Excel was reading some of the initial values as dates;

· “product” – concatenated the “name” & “set_ID_new” to form a unique name of the product because there is a substantial number of the “name” values that are repeating; also, decided to use “product” as a broader term instead of “set” to refer to the individual items that were released – so an “actual set”, a “book”, or a “key chain” are all products.

· “decade” – binned the “year” of release into decades;

II. Creating a Supplement Table - I created a helper table in Power BI to be able to create the game. This a one-row table with column headers named as the selections (exp., “P1”, “Belle’s Castle”, “King’s Castle”, and “Weetabix Castle”) and values “0” on the wrong answers and values (1-10) on the correct answers. I used the latter as values in the card visuals so that I can number them.

The Design…

I tried to attach a symbolic meaning to every element I used when designing the layout. To elaborate… I used basic shapes and colors to resemble the LEGO bricks.

On the “Piece by Piece” page, I numbered the pieces not only for the ease of the user to connect them to the corresponding blank spaces in the story, but also to resemble the LEGO instructions where the assembling steps are numbered. To continue with this idea, I put the 3 arrows on both pages not only to direct the user’s attention, but also to show symbolically how the pieces connect to form the set. In this case, a structure that starts with the set with the most pieces in 1970 (471 pcs), builds up, and tops with the tallest set released in 2022 (10+K pcs) - to depict visually the evolution of the LEGO sets over the years.

The Story…

I used online resources to write a concise history of LEGO (Wikipedia & LEGO website). I started with an article on Wikipedia and used ChatGPT to summarize it. I did it this way to see if I would be able to build the game around that initial summary of the LEGO history, but I had to go back and forth between the data, the sources, and my concept of the final product to arrive at the final version of it. To follow is the initial version of the summary and the prompt I used:

The Interactivity…

To build the game and the dashboard, I used only Power BI Native Visuals, Field Parameters, and (lots of!) Conditional Formatting. In the dashboard, the visuals are only responding to the main slicer and the line chart has it's own slicer. In the Matrix, the user can drill up and down between the "themes" and the "products" within the themes. Also, I used the "min value" of the "year" of release so that the year when the first product from that theme was released can be derived.

The Resources…

1.  https://www.lego.com/cdn/cs/legal/assets/blt1a4c9a959ce8e1cb/LEGO_Fairplay_Nov2018.pdf 
   

2.  https://www.lego.com/en-us/categories/adults-welcome/article/biggest-lego-sets-ever-made
   

3.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lego