8 Research, design, and development

 

This chapter covers

  • A case study about building a dashboard from beginning to end
  • Researching and planning what should go into a dashboard
  • Designing how the dashboard should look and work and how the data should be modeled
  • Iterating to build the final product

Up until this point, you’ve gotten little snapshots and vignettes of things you can do to up-level visualizations you’re already making. I’ve tried to give you insider information, things I had to figure out on my own because no one ever told me, such as how to pronounce WCAG and how to use different color spaces to tweak a color so it looks just how you’d like it to look. Now, it’s time to take a viz from start to finish, from a blank page and clueless users to a clean and beautiful product with happy and informed users. It’s time to talk about the end-to-end development of a visualization project, so we’re going to walk through a fictional case study using fake hospitality data.

8.1 The case study

8.2 The research and planning phase

8.2.1 Interviewing stakeholders and users

8.2.2 Digging up data

8.2.3 Documenting the requirements

8.3 The design phase

8.3.1 Shaping a data model around design

8.3.2 To sketch or not to sketch

8.3.3 Laying out a dashboard

8.4 The development phase

8.4.1 Prototyping

8.4.2 Get feedback early and often

8.4.3 Design choices

8.4.4 Documentation

Summary