Recreate Data Viz: Week 2

As a way to learn data visualization, I've started re-creating projects from people I admire to get some practice. Initially, I wanted to do this for about 10 weeks, but along with some personal things that came up, and after trying this out for a while, I think it's time to switch gears a bit after this week. But for now, let's dive into this week's visualization (that I've sadly been working on for a long time - motivation is a bitch!)

Overview of this week's project

I really liked that Eva Murray chose a data set (waste on UK beaches) from the BBC article on plastic pollution for Makeover Monday (week 14 in 2019) and it was really interesting seeing Eva’s visualization and Andy Kriebel’s take on this. This week, instead of just re-creating a visualization, I wanted to go a step further and create my own basic visualization.

Which visualization post is the one?

The visualization I picked to re-create was Andy’s because it added additional information to the visualization from the article that I initially missed, and his bar charts helped the audience compare data points much better than the original. Plus, the interaction was really great! So what I’ll do is follow a similar direction as his, but find ways to customize it and make it my own.

How can I create instead of just re-creating?

Andy’s visualization is great, but it eliminated the granularity of the type of waste found on UK beaches within 100 m, and I felt that added more context to what people leave behind in the environment and it won’t take away from the impact of plastic, but allow people to realize HOW MUCH trash is out there. For my own visualization, I went with Andy’s bar chart, but added back in the other types of waste by category, essentially transforming the original visualization into a bar chart. Yey!

Was this a good way to spend my time?

Yes! It helped me practice something new in Tableau and try to create some original content but without the fear of building something from scratch.

Next post/moving forward

This was an interesting exercise, but I don’t think this format is motivating enough to keep me going and help me practice as much as I want to. Going forward, I’ve decided to dive into Andy J Pizza's (aka Andy Miller) Creative Career Path workbook and podcast episodes (episodes 170 - 176), get some better direction on projects and set more realistic deadlines for myself - like the Iron Viz Tableau competition on music!! due on July 21st.

Trying to practice something that doesn’t have an immediate impact on my career is really tough, but I think that I can keep going for the long-term if I can find a process I really enjoy, because just focusing on results isn’t enough to keep me in the game. We’ll see how it goes – it's all a journey of exploration haha

Additional Information:

• For Makeover Monday – Week 14 in 2019
• Article: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42264788
• Andy Kriebel’s visualization: http://www.vizwiz.com/2019/04/uk-beach-waste.html
• Eva Murray’s visualization: https://trimydata.com/2019/04/01/mm2019-week14/
• My own visualization: https://public.tableau.com/profile/ioana.s2410#!/vizhome/UKbeachwaste2017/Sheet1