Tiny Toy Dashboard Story

About this project

Tiny Toy Dashboard Story

Once upon a time, there was a tiny dashboard on a team of data visualizations working for a retail conglomerate.

The store's management and other data visualizations had little confidence that the tiny dashboard could contribute critical insights to big questions.

“It’s just a toy,” they teased. “Can such a small dashboard really tell us everything we need to know?” She became known as Tiny Toy Dashboard.

Do all dashboards always need fancy parts and packaging? Let's find out...

The PivotTable Sprint

The data team was tasked with understanding how the company's products were performing across product categories for any upcoming campaigns.

Every data visualization was to create and submit their own approach.

To accomplish this, they had carte blanche access to all sales records for all products from which to reveal the revenue patterns hidden within the data, create a user-friendly, interactive dashboard to help management better understand revenue patterns across product categories, and eventually, help decision makers make decisions.

In team meetings, Tiny Toy Dashboard was not shy about showing what she's made of—just 15,000 sales records for all 35 different products. She defended her choice of not using a data lake's worth of data. "Sure, it's not 'big data' (she said with a bit of sass,) but too much data is more than enough."

Tiny Toy Dashboard had made a good argument for herself.

She also decided to limit her investigations to whether sales were stronger on weekdays or weekends, how sales trended over recent months and years, and which products were increasingly flying off the shelves.

Those decisions resulted in 3 PivotTables.

Sum of revenue by day type (weekend and weekday) and formatted by percentage
Sum of revenue by month and year
Sum of revenue by product. Only the top five are shown.

undefined She presented her approach and raw findings to the team.

"Three PivotTables? Ha!" said management and the "others. "Everyone knows there is never enough data. We need all the data we can get. Who knows what questions may come up in the coming months!"

One of them uttered this fancy gem, "'Tis better to be overprepared, than underprepared!" Everyone nodded.

They were united with their static even though they couldn't deny Tiny Toy Dashboard's raw findings were on point and even though they couldn't deny she was adhering to a valuable design principle.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,

None of the other approaches earned unanimity, either, as each were equally confusing having so many metrics to defend and sort through.

Still, they pushed aside Tiny Toy Dashboard.

Discouraged, but not defeated, she reminded herself that there is always ad-hoc needs to fill and that 'not now' doesn't mean 'not ever.'

Campaign Season Approaches

Time passed after the PivotTable sprint, and the team forgot about the lack of consensus.

The most critical of campaign seasons snuck up on management and the "others." There was only so much time now to get in front of management for campaign planning.

While management and the "others" were gearing up by creating Gantt charts, fighting over all the pressing priorities, and negotiating UX and graphic design services from the marketing department, Tiny Toy Dashboard quickly picked up where she had left off.

Again, she focused on what mattered most: helping the store understand its revenue patterns and make smarter decisions.

Dashboard Playtime

Fortunately, Tiny Toy Dashboard's fun-sized stature meant she could hit the deadline, much to the "other's" chagrin.

During the presentation to management, it was rediscovered that slicers, the function with buttons that you can select to filter data, is not lost on a small dashboard or single visual.

In addition to quick filtering, slicers also visually indicate the current filtering state, which makes it easy to understand what exactly is currently displayed. (This is especially good for non-data stakeholders.)

On top of that dynamo, cross-filtering between visuals was implemented, instantly orchestrating unified visuals for maximum intuitiveness.

As seemingly simple and boringly unadorned as she was, Tiny Toy Dashboard was a marvel.

View 1

After playing around with Tiny Toy Dashboard (as if she was a toy,) management soon settled on two most-insightful views. One being all products, except toys.

View 2

And one displaying nothing except toys.

Final Analysis & Insights

Much to everyone's surprise—except Tiny Toy Dashboard’s—the focused approach yielded much-needed clarity; toys-only sales were:

Equal percentage splits of weekend/weekday sales when compared to all other products
Leading in sales by roughly half of the sum of all other products
At a glance, the only product noticeably trending upward

The management's selection of Tiny Toy Dashboard for its presentation to the decision-makers helped the decision makers see what they need to see in order to determined which products would be front page and above the fold during the opening weekend of the big season's marketing campaign. Toys!

Conclusion

From that day on, Tiny Toy Dashboard was no longer seen as just a toy. She was a vital tool, helping management make informed decisions, and earning her place alongside the biggest and fanciest dashboards on the team.

Happy tiny dashboarding!