Recreate Data Viz: Week 1

This week I chose to recreate the Makeover Monday dashboard from Week 12 by Eva Murray, based on the article "How do we really feel about women leaders?" from the World Economic Forum (Dec 10, 2018).

See a list of all the Makover Monday visualizations here.

I really liked Eva’s visualization, because it added more of a storyline and depth to the original visualization, instead of just re-shaping it. It also seemed to condense the article a lot more than the original visualization did, which was pretty great! Because there were only two options to choose from, I chose the one that seemed to tell a story in a compelling way. Her blog post was a great read because she explains her thinking process behind why she changed certain elements in her own version.

Did I find this helpful in learning data visualization? Yes! Here are 4 reasons why:

1. Learning good layout principles – while re-creating the visualization, I was careful to also re-create the layout with similar spacing and flow, which made me more conscious of the Gestalt principles and allowed me to recognize what I like in the dashboard and what I’d do differently. The use of color was great in this dashboard, but I think the proximity felt a little off.
2. Learning chart types and Excel limitations - since I’m so new at this, this was a helpful exercise to learn how to create a chart with a reference line in Excel, and how to adjust Tableau charts to Excel limitations. The exercise also expanded my vocabulary of chart types (e.g. slope graphs – I feel like I should’ve known this chart name already haha). This was a humbling experience but learning something new felt really good at the end of the day.
3. Learning storytelling – it was interesting to see what Eva Murray chose to focus on in this dashboard, as well as the pace and flow of the data. I was drawn to this visualization initially because it covered more than the high-level country results, but also showed the gender dissonance in context, which I think is very important for the topic of equality in leadership. I loved the way she explained the data, which allowed me to feel the impact of the insights found in the data. THIS IS THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS FIELD, right??
4. Learning the importance of an interesting topic – this exercise wouldn’t have been this enjoyable if I didn’t already have some interest in the article and its findings. So it’s really important to find datasets on topics that make me feel energized, instead of something that would just make for a cool visualization. The latter isn’t compelling enough at the end of the day.

All in all, I really enjoyed exploring this topic and getting some practice at data visualization, but in a less scary way than creating everything from scratch on my own.


Here’s a link to Eva Murray’s visualization: https://trimydata.com/2019/03/17/mm2019-week12/

The original article: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/12/women-reykjavik-index-leadership