Tableau Dashboard Assignment Report: Identifying Market Opportunities Through Data-Driven Insights

Assignment scope

Using Tableau, the objective of this assignment is to design a data visualisation dashboard,
implementing best practice in data visualisation design. As well, your critical thinking,
decision making and storytelling capabilities will be assessed.

Assignment description

Imagine that the C-level executives (CEO, CPO, CIO, CFO etc.) of a fictious company asked
you to investigate data and share your experience with a view to find a new opportunity
(and/or pinpoint potential threads) for this business (e.g. entering a new market, developing
a new service, attracting new customers, trying to avoid customer attrition etc.). They asked
for your assistance in making such a decision and requested that you analyse a dataset using
Tableau and present a compelling argument to invest in a specific market or innovation.

In this assignment you will need to design a single dashboard visualisation for a dataset /
open dataset of your choice, using the Tableau software (see next section for indicative open
datasets).

Based on the selected data try to present evidence on whether the company can invest in
any specific market or innovation, to assist the company in this decision. Formulate
questions based on the given dataset to assist you in presenting a nice story using your data.
Use your critical thinking and pay particular attention on storytelling. Your task is to design
an interactive visualisation dashboard that you believe effectively communicates the data
and present insights e.g. trends, opportunities within a business context.

You are free to make any assumptions e.g. about the fictious company, its products, market
etc.

Your dashboard should:

• Allow some level of interaction and data interrogation (i.e., include filters)
• Be designed in accordance to data visualisation best practice (please reference the (i)
  Tableau tutorial material and (ii) lecture content and material on Blackboard)

During your analysis pay attention to the choice of visualisation type, size, colour, scale, and
other visual elements. Keep in mind that all these decisions facilitate effective
communication to potentially support decision-making.

Indicative datasets

Below you may find some examples of links to online and open datasets:

• Ireland’s Open Data Portal
  Promoting innovation and transparency through the publication of Irish Public Sector data in
  open, free and reusable formats
  https://data.gov.ie/data
• European Data Portal
  Thousands of datasets from EU member states regarding issues of public interest such as
  Transport, Agriculture, Economics, Environment, etc.
  https://data.europa.eu/en
• Kaggle
  Includes over 50,000 public datasets
  https://www.kaggle.com/
• United Nations Data Sets
  Several databases containing over 60 million records covering a wide range of themes
  including Agriculture, Crime, Education, Employment, Energy, Environment, Health,
  HIV/AIDS, Human Development, Industry, Information and Communication Technology,
  National Accounts, Population, Refugees, Tourism, Trade, as well as the Millennium
  Development Goals indicators.
  http://data.un.org/Explorer.aspx
• UK Government Data
  Datasets available from all UK central government departments and a number of other
  public sector bodies and local authorities.
  https://data.gov.uk/search
• Mendeley Data
  It includes 28.9 million datasets from domain-specific and cross-domain repositories
  https://data.mendeley.com
• Irish Organisation for Geographic Information (IRLOGI)
  Irish GIS data sources and links to other portals
  http://www.irlogi.ie/datasets.php
• Spatial Data & Other Datasets for Ireland (link maintained by UCD Library)
  Links to hosts of datasets for such topics as: Administrative Boundaries; Agriculture; Air
  Quality; Archaeology; Bathymetry; Birds; Built Heritage; Conservation Areas; Crime;
  Economics; Education; Elevation Data; Extractive Industries; Flooding; Flora; Forestry;
  Geology; Habitats; Health; Housing; Hydrology; Insects; Ireland_Shapefiles; Labour Market;
  Land Cover; Land Use; Mammals; Marine Data; Mining; Natural Heritage; Satellite Imagery;
  Population; Social Data; Soil; Topography; Transportation & Travel; Utilities; Waste; Water
  Quality; Weather & Climatology; Wind Energy.
  https://libguides.ucd.ie/gisguide/FindSpatialData
• Central Statistics Office Databases (Ireland)
  Links to statistical databases of the Irish CSO, other public sector bodies, and international
  organisations.
  https://www.cso.ie/en/databases/
• EPA Geoportal site This geoportal is designed to make data about the environment easier
  to find, browse and understand. You can download GIS data and find other portals to
  download datasets.
  https://gis.epa.ie
• Hadoop Illuminated > Publicly Available Big Data Sets
  List of publicly available big data sets
  http://hadoopilluminated.com/hadoop_illuminated/Public_Bigdata_Sets.html
• KDnuggets
  Links to several business data sets from North America, Europe, and worldwide databases
  https://www.kdnuggets.com/datasets/index.html

You are free to select any dataset of your choice, even if it is not included in the
aforementioned suggestions. You are also free to select a smaller sample of the dataset
under examination in case you face any issue with the processing capabilities of your
PC/laptop.

Deliverable and deadline

Intermediate Deliverable: All are required to submit the following:

• which dataset you selected to analyse for your assignment
• why (in 2-3 sentences)
• which are your business questions

This is compulsory for your assignment.

DEADLINE: 18/04/2025 @18:00

Final Deliverable

To describe your findings, visualisation design, and recommendations to the C-level
executives of the fictious organisation, you are required to submit a dashboard with the
Tableau file and a report.

DEADLINE: 02/05/2025 @18:00

Marks awarded: 40% of the overall marks for the course.

Late Submission or No Submission

Late submissions will be penalised by 10% per day (or part of). Submissions received later
than 3 days past the original submission date will be regarded as a non-submission and will
be awarded a zero mark.

Assessment criteria (40% of final mark)

The dashboard and report will be assessed on a number of factors including:

• Your explanation of the dataset (e.g. decision to select the dataset, context of dataset,
  preparing the dataset, etc.)
• Your ability to determine suitable questions based on a selected dataset (e.g. explain
  decision to create a number of questions which your dataset can adequately address and
  why these questions are worth exploring).
• Your ability to demonstrate your knowledge of Tableau functions (Note, not all of these
  functions are necessary, but you should select the most appropriate to support your
  insights).
• Your ability to create worksheet visualisations (a number of Tableau worksheets to explore
  research questions).
• Your ability to develop dashboard (experimenting with various visualisations to represent
  clear key data insights)
• Your ability to explain the chart.

The Report could have following chapters:

1. Introduction to the data set
2. Business questions
3. Analysis of the questions
4. Suggestion and conclusion

The word limit for the assignment is 2000 words.

Submission of the dashboard, along with the Tableau file and report, is mandatory.