Book Image

Data Storytelling with Google Looker Studio

By : Sireesha Pulipati
Book Image

Data Storytelling with Google Looker Studio

By: Sireesha Pulipati

Overview of this book

Presenting data visually makes it easier for organizations and individuals to interpret and analyze information. Looker Studio is an easy-to-use, collaborative tool that enables you to transform your data into engaging visualizations. This allows you to build and share dashboards that help monitor key performance indicators, identify patterns, and generate insights to ultimately drive decisions and actions. Data Storytelling with Looker Studio begins by laying out the foundational design principles and guidelines that are essential to creating accurate, effective, and compelling data visualizations. Next, you’ll delve into features and capabilities of Looker Studio – from basic to advanced – and explore their application with examples. The subsequent chapters walk you through building dashboards with a structured three-stage process called the 3D approach using real-world examples that’ll help you understand the various design and implementation considerations. This approach involves determining the objectives and needs of the dashboard, designing its key components and layout, and developing each element of the dashboard. By the end of this book, you will have a solid understanding of the storytelling approach and be able to create data stories of your own using Looker Studio.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1 – Data Storytelling Concepts
5
Part 2 – Looker Studio Features and Capabilities
10
Part 3 – Building Data Stories with Looker Studio

Understanding foundational design principles

Well-crafted and effective dashboards are built on the foundations of design and visual perception that have been explored and studied for centuries. In contemporary times, Edward Tufte and Stephen Few are recognized as pioneers and the most notable leading experts of modern-day data visualization. Through their prolific work, they have elucidated the many intricacies of visualizing data and information effectively. In this section, we are going to review the following foundational principles and guidelines that form the basis of any good dashboard:

  • Simplicity of design
  • Organizing the layout
  • Accuracy of information presented

Simplicity of design

The single most important guiding principle to building any visual representation of data is simplicity. Achieving simplicity mainly involves removing all distractions away from the data to be represented. In Edward Tufte’s words, it’s avoiding chart junk....