Hi! This is already my second blog, and today I want to talk about what helped me figure out Tableau and build my first dashboard.
First, I found a dataset on Kaggle that I liked. I absolutely love marketing research. I really enjoy analyzing the market in terms of differences, so I chose data specifically about marketing research. Why? Because I knew you could really play around with this kind of data and interpret it in many different ways.
Next, I already had a vision of how I wanted certain data to be presented, but I didn’t know which buttons in Tableau I needed to press to make it happen. So I turned to the internet, The Data School Blog, YouTube, and of course, ChatGPT. I don’t always fully trust the latter — sometimes it gives unexpected warnings — but it definitely speeds up the process of finding the information I need.
Another challenge is when you have the data but no clear idea which type of chart would suit it best or how exactly to visualize it. That’s when deep research begins — diving into Tableau Public, browsing through similar works, and looking for inspiration.
Through this process, I learned what you can and can’t do in Tableau, and how exactly things are done — especially thanks to one magical feature: many open dashboards can be downloaded, and you can peek inside to see how a particular chart was built. This is incredibly helpful.
While working, I kept discovering new features, redoing charts hundreds of times, and changing the dashboard layout again and again. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes or get things wrong the first time. You’re learning, and even the masters don’t get everything perfect on the first try. Approach it with curiosity and patience.
Here’s one more tip from my previous field of work (creating Weiterbildung courses): if you want to quickly learn something on your own, try recreating someone else’s work exactly. This really helps you master the program’s functionality without getting distracted by design choices or wondering how it “could” be done. Of course, the goal is not to claim the work as your own, but I’ll tell you — it’s not easy to make an identical chart, and you will learn a lot in the process.
So, Tableau is not always intuitive, but if you get close to this program, you’ll see that the further you go, the easier it becomes 😊
Photo by path digital on Unsplash