Fiona (00:11)
Welcome to Undubbed, podcast that's unscripted, uncensored, and undeniably data. I'm Fi
Sarah (00:18)
And I'm Sarah and today we're kicking off something special for the Data Fam.
Fiona (00:24)
That's right, it's our Iron Viz feeder series. We're chatting with some of the most incredible creators who have their heart, soul, and so many hours into their Iron Viz entries this year. And if you're tuning in on Apple or on Spotify and just listening, we recommend that you tune into a version where you can actually watch along, because they're going to be demonstrating their own visualizations that they stepped in. So that's on Spotify video or YouTube video.
Sarah (00:53)
That's right, they're not on the big stage just yet, but they're throwing their hats into the ring and hoping to make it to the finals in the US next May.
Fiona (01:03)
two part series, you'll hear what really goes down into an Iron Viz submission, the spark of the idea, the creative chaos and the self-doubt, the breakthroughs, and a few secrets from those who have been there before and even make the stage.
Sarah (01:18)
If you've ever wondered what it takes to stand out in Iron Biz, or you just love hearing how data stories come to life, you are in the right place.
Fiona (01:27)
So settle in, hit follow and share this with anyone who's got their site set on I'mVisGlory or just loves to deliver great visualizations for their jobs.
Sarah (01:38)
This is Undubbed, brought to you by Dub Dub Data.
Fiona (01:43)
And welcome Kevin Wee to our amazing Iron Viz special. Thank you so much for joining us today. You're a two times visionary and of course a Tableau ambassador as well. And if anyone is part of the Data Fam, they would know you for your beautiful design. And when I saw your Iron Viz submission, I knew that I had to get you on the PODDY onto Undubbed today. So welcome.
Kevin Wee (02:12)
Thanks for having me.
Fiona (02:14)
Yeah, it's awesome to have you here. Okay, Sarah, why don't you kick off with our fast question for Kevin.
Sarah (02:19)
Yeah, so first of all, I love your visualization. It takes me back to Singapore a little bit with the food that has inspired this. I'd like you to talk us through the storytelling and design aspect of your submission.
Kevin Wee (02:37)
Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Well, first of all, I just want to say that as a Chinese Malaysian, well, I'm glad that you have visited Singapore, β both Singapore and Malaysia. We have good food. And I think because there's so many Chinese people in these two countries, we preserve our heritage very well. So we enjoy a lot of our traditional food, like what's showing today, which is the dim sum. So I'm going to share my screen now and then I'm going to talk through. I'm going to address your questions.
what you're seeing now on screen, it's my iron viz qualifier submission and title, the nutrition values of dim sum. And this is actually an expansion version of the original viz that I had a couple of years ago. So you can treat this as a sequel of that viz of the day.
This visualizations, I explore different dishes that's commonly found in a dim sum restaurant. If you go to the thumbnail here, you can see that you can hover over different dish. It will tell you what it is. We have like, you know, the steamed pork dumpling. We have things like the β prawn dumpling, ha gao. We have things about the tea. You can learn a little bit about the tea, a little bit about the sauce as well. So kind of give you an experience of what it's like to eat.
to dine in a dim sum restaurant. And when you scroll down a little bit, it will tell you, basically this is the table of content, right? Telling you each chapter, what you shall expect from them. And then we're gonna jump into the body of content. We start by the nutrition value of these 76 commonly found dishes. you may filter them by each dish category.
After that, we would come into a part where we call a case study. This is a case study where I'm just going to assume that it's very hard to analyze 76 dishes. So I'm going to tell you that let's pretend that I brought two of my friends and then we go and enjoy only 12 of them. Let's see how well we're doing in terms of nutrition, energy sources, and what kind of ingredient we have ingested and use that as a case study to explore the nutrition value.
of my cuisine. After that, the second chapter would be exploring the energy sources. We know that human body take proteins, carbohydrates, and fat as our energy source. And a healthy balance of diet, it's not one third of each, but basically more on the fat and carb side and less on the protein side. I didn't know that until I did a study. And then I was just exploring.
These are all the 76 dishes and these are the dish category. And if you scroll down a little bit in the case study part, these are the 12 dishes that I selected. So I only studied this. I don't care about all of them. No one's going to eat all 76 dishes in one go. And if you did, it's not about nutrition that you should care about. Right. So, after that, the third part of my viz would be to explore what kind of ingredients were.
used to make each of the dishes. You can study all of them in combined or you can go to each of the dish to explore that specific item. I'm a Chinese. I know that a lot of people that read my visualization chances are they would be more familiar with the Chinese name of these dishes. Therefore, we also have a filter with the Chinese name for the locals. β And just to give people a sense of what's made of.
what these dishes are made of. After that, again, we dive back into the case study and study what ingredients have been used to make that 12 dishes. And then I, as a person that ate this, I just want to know that which of these has contributed to the, let's say, the higher content of fat, the higher content of sugar, higher content on cholesterol, so to speak. So.
After all of this troubleshooting, right? Analyzing things. We talk about the what part, like what's the nutrition value? And then we talk about the so what part, so what part, right? Like with this nutrition value, how well they're generating energy. Now we're talking about this now what? The now what part is like, now can we make a little bit of a difference in our choices to make my
dining experience more healthy. So I came up with four different ways to make the dining of dim sum dishes more enjoyable and healthy, including, you know, call a friend or call multiple friends to join you to share the calories, or you can just straight out order less item, you know, just don't order that much. You can actually toggle this like click on every item that you may want to order. You can cancel it.
Fiona (07:05)
Thank
Kevin Wee (07:26)
And you can see how the nutrition value dropped. You can also choose a healthier alternatives. β For example, here, the top item, it's the original item, the bottom item in every group, that is the healthier versions of it. So basically, if you select the healthier versions, you should have a healthier outcome when it comes to nutrition value. Yep. Or you know what, you can just enjoy everything and then just run it off later. You can exercise later.
Right? You know what? Sometimes we don't want to, we don't want to change anything. We're just going to suffer later. as. Yeah, like we're safe. We can just order all this and then we can all enjoy the run two hours later. So basically you can hear, you can enter your body weight and then it would tell you if you choose different common, exercise, how many hours it will take you to run off the energy and the carbs.
Sarah (07:58)
That would be me. That would be me.
Fiona (08:00)
That's not me.
Kevin Wee (08:17)
Basically, you can see that this is the well-hated pie chart, but I call it a time pie. Each time pie, it's 10 minutes. So a full circle will be 60 minutes.
Fiona (08:29)
It reminds me of a cyclist wheel.
Kevin Wee (08:35)
Yeah, it does, right? It does, right? Especially when there's only two of them and happens to be in the bicycling β role. So, hey, that's what's meant to me. So I ended everything with a closed statements. And then of course, with the credits to most of the resources that I've been pulled off to make this visualization. So, this is like a very big ideas of what this visualization is like. I'm just going to quickly talk about a couple of key design component that I have implemented in this visualization.
Number one is golden ratio. So when you open your screen, most people screen the width and the height ratio is pretty close to golden ratio. So what, when I designed this visualization, I want every time when you slide that frame, go to rectangle frame, there's something important and visually stunning to see. So at first you're wowed by the thumbnail, right? And then after the thumbnail, the second you scroll down,
you have something with interesting shapes and they scroll again, all of the key information, they can be fit within the golden rectangle. And then there's always something more at the bottom to prompt you to scroll more. So this is a little bit of a tactic that I use to keep people scrolling. The second thing that I like to say is that I use an idea that I leverage from graphic design and β
like journal layout. That is something that we call a modular grid. For people that are not familiar with it, modular grid is just a grid of writing columns and rows with gaps in between the columns and rows and margins surrounding it. I use it as a way to align the text and align the visual component. That's why I consider all my texts. I believe this is a 12 column grids. it's all of the text is almost one third of the grid.
So everything looks super aligned. The last thing I like to say it's a typography. Basically every same kind of information, they look the same throughout the visualization. The body text always look the same. I believe I was using Salesforce sense about 12 points. And then of course, within Tableau, we're using Tableau sense. yeah, so just to give.
three examples of the design tactics that I've used. And in terms of storytellings, as I've said earlier I knew that 76 dishes is extremely overwhelming for everybody. That's why in terms of storytelling, I narrow it down to 12 items. And then we're just going to play, you know, we're just going to play pretend that we ate this 12 things and then what would happen? I think this gave people a very good context into understanding how nutrition works.
in terms of this kind of cuisine. So that's it. I hope that answered your question.
Sarah (11:26)
Yes, it did. And thanks for walking us through that because there's so much to go through. And it was really great to see the nuances and everything. And I love those graphic design techniques that you've employed because it really does make you just want to keep going. And even here where you've got the border around, but it's going to encourage you to keep flowing because the border doesn't finish in that golden rectangle that you spoke about. So I just love it.
Kevin Wee (11:50)
Yeah.
Sarah (11:55)
I've got a question to ask just around, like, there's a lot of data in here. Did you spend a lot of time in the data?
Kevin Wee (11:57)
Sure.
So I'm going to scroll down to the reference part real quick. So I'll say that most of the nutrition, you mean how much time I spent on looking for them or analyzing them.
Sarah (12:15)
I think even both, because I think that can be a bit of a roadblock for some people, is trying to think of where to start and how to get that data, and if you could talk a little bit about your journey.
Kevin Wee (12:19)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so I completely bumped into the original set of the nutrition's values part of the data. So I came into the Hong Kong Central Food Safety website and I found out that they already did a study. They basically analyzed that 76 dishes and then they had a of recommendations of how much you should eat, what you should avoid and things like that. But the whole thing read very scientifically.
Right? It's, feel like you're reading a scientific papers and no one's going to read this. If this is a, you know, scientific visualization, right? I wouldn't say no one else. Say the most people would be intimidated by that. So I, that's why I used the case study to make it approachable. the part that took me forever to figure out was the recipe part and the nutrition value of the recipe, because basically the recipe, everybody had a different versions of how to make things. So I had to go find.
Fiona (13:09)
Hmm.
Kevin Wee (13:22)
the one that I deemed the most appropriate. And then I put the link in my spreadsheet. And the second thing is I had to go to the US Department of Agricultural website to find the nutrition value of each of these ingredients. Now I'm super familiar with what's the nutrition value of flour, carrot, scallion, soy sauce. Now I know where to find them. But that part took me forever. But going through all of this, actually make it...
make me appreciate all this information that the FDA has been putting out there or the equivalent of FDA in different parts of the world. Like these information is out there so that you can make an informed decisions in how healthy you want to eat. So make sure you take them in as well.
Fiona (14:07)
thank you so much for walking through all of that. And what really shines through for me and your visualization is the connection with you and where you come from and your connection with food as well. Because to have that commitment to go and do all of that analysis and, get all of that data and to put it in, but to really then present it in a way that
makes us all want to run out and get dim sum straight away. It means a lot and your design aesthetic is like, get you know, it's like going to a great restaurant and having amazing dishes put out in front of you the way that you approach data, not only in this visualization, but in all of the visualizations that I've seen of yours, it's just so thoughtful. And it's all of those.
minor touches. It's like people are going in with the, you know, the micro herbs and just layering those things on because that's where it should go to be visually pleasing and really invite you into the dishes. So I'm just blown away by how beautiful this delivery is.
Kevin Wee (15:21)
Well, thank you very much. is β well, β for the longest time, I didn't have much training in terms of arts and, you know, traditional graphic design classes and everything. But I pick a lot of this up on the street and a lot of examples on Tableau public or other infographic designers using Adobe or other softwares. I think there's a lot of good learning resources out there.
And β when specifically when I designed this visualization, because I am β a Chinese Malaysian, my mother's side of family, they came from β Canton or Guangdong in the modern term. So we're half, I'm half Cantonese. So this is basically half side of my food is this. When I designed this visualization, I tried to make people appreciate my culture a little bit more without making it look too much like a Chinatown thing.
Does it make sense to you? you know, I'm trying not to use the chopstick font, right? I'm trying not to use the, you know, bright red. Everybody's going to expect bright red from me. was like, no, like, let's try something else. So I went to the other side and use, you know, dark green instead. But yeah, I'm glad that it's conveyed mood wise and information wise. And yeah, the point is for people to enjoy the food. I'm glad that part got delivered.
Fiona (16:18)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, your colors
are outstanding. Like it's really interesting to see how you've layered on. And I felt that it was, you know, there was a lot of green up the top, but then as we came down into the petals of the β ingredients that were coming through, I think it really blended so well.
like there's not many people that understand color theory but I feel like you've got a great understanding about that flow and how to introduce it into your visualizations.
Kevin Wee (17:17)
Yeah, I'm glad. I was going to, in terms of color, I just want to give a tip to your audience. There's a plugin on Google. It's called Color Blindly. Basically it's a good color blindness simulator. clicking, can you see the color change or am I the only one seeing it? Yeah. So by clicking this, can immediately see whether your visualization is working or not.
Sarah (17:17)
Yeah, you've got it. sorry.
Mmm.
Fiona (17:37)
No, I can't say it. β
Yes.
Sarah (17:43)
Amazing.
Kevin Wee (17:44)
Yeah, so yeah. So it's a.
Fiona (17:47)
So good.
Sarah (17:48)
Nice.
So Kevin, I was going to say you're pretty much confessing you're self taught in terms of graphic design, but you obviously have a real eye for it. One last question before we go approximately how much time do you think you spent on this visualization?
Kevin Wee (18:07)
Well, the thing is when they first hinted about we may have food, I already start, rereading the PDF file of the original data set, but I didn't have the data set for ingredients. didn't have the data set for recipe. didn't have the data set for nutrition value of the ingredients. So all of those parts took, I think I only started putting things together two weeks in.
So it means that I might must have taken two to three weeks, two to three weeks just to deal with the data, And then the last three days of the contest, I actually took a pay time off. I look at my balance was like, okay, I still have a couple of days to go. And then I didn't have, don't have family here. So there's no point for me to celebrate Thanksgiving. So, you know, I did the math was that, know what, I'm just going to take three days off and just to go through with this.
So yeah, it took some time, but I have to say I also went out and enjoyed Halloween party, drinkings with my friends, eating with my friends. So I didn't lose a life for the contest. So I just want to put it out there. But nonetheless, I have to say that I do know that a lot of parents, lot of couples, caretakers in the families, β students, they have other responsibility. I've been...
fortunate in that way that I don't have a cat, I don't have a dog, I don't have other obligations β in my life other than my job. it's, β that rhymes too. So it's a little bit easier for me that
Fiona (19:42)
That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it and we'll pass over to the next Data Fam member.
Kevin Wee (19:54)
Thank you.
Sarah (19:55)
Thanks Kevin.
Sarah (19:58)
Next up we're meeting Heather Cox. Heather is a second time Tableau ambassador. We've all got the shirts to prove it. Very exciting and she leads the Adelaide tug. Welcome Heather.
Heather (20:12)
Thanks for having me. Very exciting.
Fiona (20:15)
We're so excited to have you on our Iron Viz special today. I know how excited you were to get started and we're waiting for that data β topic to actually drop. So we'd love to learn more today about your Iron Viz submission and how do you make a story about something super technical, relatable.
Heather (20:39)
Yeah, as you say, I was really hanging out for the announcement of the theme. When we got the full theme, yes, when the first sort teasers came out and we're talking about food, I may have gone on a little bit of a rant. It's not a big topic for me.
Sarah (20:46)
Were you happy with it when it came out?
Heather (21:04)
very motivated by food. And so I went on a bit of a rant about how the heck was I supposed to do this? And Alex came back and said, you did it two weeks ago β because I'd done the wisdom of crowds, viz on the lollipops, I'd been guessing the number of lollipops in the jar. I, yeah, whoops. So I was coming up with all kinds of ideas about how I could sort of do food. And then they dropped the real theme, food and drink.
Fiona (21:25)
Ha ha ha.
Heather (21:34)
And I went, that's right. I've had this idea for ages about putting together all the details of like the mocktail recipes, like the non-alcoholic cocktails. And I had wanted to optimize it so that I could kind of figure out how could I buy the least number of ingredients. So I had the least amount of wastage and be able to make the most, you know, different varieties and things like that. And so I'd sort of started.
know, hand coding some JSON just to try and get things together. But I had not had the kick up the butt to actually, finish it off or really, really get into it. And so when the theme turned out to food and drink, I went, okay, yeah, this is my chance. This is my kick up the butt. And so obviously there was gonna be a lot of technical β stuff in there, being able to, you know, create like a shopping list and...
like tick things off and say what you already had in the pantry so you could figure out what ingredients you already had. So what were the new ingredients you needed to have in order to make, you know, this or that or whatever. And that was really highly technical. And then I went, wait, IronViz you've got the analysis part and the design part, where's the story in this? And I thought, this is, this is really hard. So I sat down with ChatGPT and went, okay, this is what I want to do.
But obviously, IronViz we're talking about a story. You the reason I want to do this is all of these reasons why I was looking at mocktails and all of these things, because it's so difficult to, you know, find something to drink when you go out, if you're not drinking alcohol. What's the, yeah, if you don't want to be drinking juice with the kids, what do you do? How do you get around this? And so the mocktails are sort of where.
where I'd gone with this this line of thinking and chat GPT just went you idiot. That's the story like I Kind of realized as I was writing it, but it really just hit at home and then started talking about You know sort of how to how to refine that and so that's where I ended up with with my big my big thing
Fiona (23:30)
You
Sarah (23:43)
I'm thinking this could be really useful in bars as well.
Heather (23:46)
Well, mean, hopefully, but I think the big idea that we came down to was around like what happens at home, like sharing when you when you're having guests around, because that's that's where we can really, β you know, control the environment. So yeah, this this line sort of came to me only to be sociable as I was sort of working through things, you know, I was doing a lot of sort of sketching things out in one night. And it was something that
My dad has said, since I was, I was tiny, people would ask him if he wanted a beer and he'd say, only to be sociable. And it was a big joke and we all laughed and you know, dads have these jokes that they just overuse. But yeah, it sort of struck home while I was working on this going, hey, this is, this is it. This is the, this is the key. This is the theme to it. Do you belong if you're not drinking? And how does that...
Fiona (24:26)
Hahaha
Heather (24:43)
does that affect everything about that part of our lives that social part of our lives because yeah as I sort went into it there's a very small percentage of the population that are particularly in Australia and New Zealand's not a lot different and that are not drinkers most people are
drinking regularly. what happens? What happens when you go out and there's only 5 % of the menu that will cater to non drinkers? And then what happens when you have to have, when you're sharing around and your drink costs a lot less than everyone else? Everyone gets really awkward over that. not, you know, so suddenly it makes it bit more difficult to belong. But when you're at home, you're able to
control that a bit more. So what can you do? And it turns out that in Australia, the week before Christmas, searches for mocktails just hits the high. Every single year like clockwork. So people are thinking about it. So how do we make that easier? Well, yeah, this is where we've created the, we've created this mocktail mixer, which allows you to sort of either browse through
the mocktails, select your ingredients, and then have that recommend mocktails for you that you already have ingredients for or that you're only one or two away from. And my fabulous random recipe, is I really, really pleased about that one because you can just keep clicking it and it keeps giving you random and if you've tried to do random in Tableau, you understand why that's difficult. But I also I also did this and I'm waiting to be like
Fiona (26:13)
you
Heather (26:27)
excommunicated from the Tableau community for this one. β I created an export to CSV button in my IronViz entry.
Fiona (26:30)
you
Sarah (26:36)
Is that
worse than an export to Excel? I think no.
Heather (26:39)
Well, no, but it's yeah, it was going to be an export to Excel, but I found a nice way to do it to CSV that was really clean. But yeah, you can sort of create the shopping list as you're browsing through and then you can export it to CSV. So I'm hoping that, yes, everybody will understand that it's about the functionality and forgive me
Fiona (27:03)
You're forgiven because do you know what?
I really love this take on mocktails and it hits home quite closely because there's a lot of people that are close to me that choose not to drink or that also, you know, that may only have one or two occasional drinks and it's something where they feel often excluded or even looked down on and you know, like, and I think it's because
having a drink is socially acceptable and normalized and has been for so long that people feel like, β you'll judge me if you're not drinking. And therefore that's where the tension arises from. So I really love that you've come up with this really creative way, great time of year to do it as well. And the design that you have with, you know, just the simple colors that you've selected, it's really, really beautiful.
Heather (28:01)
Thank you. I've been really surprised, I guess, by the impact that it's had on people, as you say, who are either non-drinkers or are close to people who are not drinking for whatever reason. β Because, yeah, there is sort of a sense that if you're not drinking, other people feel β the right to know why.
Fiona (28:26)
Yes.
Heather (28:27)
And those reasons can be very personal. And so it was something I didn't want to get too far into as to like, what are the reasons that you choose not to drink? Because it is a personal decision and I don't want to rank them. Like if it's important to somebody, then it's important to someone. doesn't matter, what anybody else thinks of that. Plus, we're also going to get data on that.
Fiona (28:43)
you
Sarah (28:53)
This is true. Just back on the design, see it's, I think it's quite an art deco looking visualization. And I was wondering if it was a bit of a nod to prohibition, maybe.
Heather (29:05)
There was a little bit of that. I think the martini glass sort of occurred to me at one point and the little legend in the the olives. was like yeah okay I've got an idea here but then the colour scheme like how am going to do the colour scheme? How am going to do the colour scheme? And was playing around with a few different ideas and then like the art deco thing. I can't remember where it came from but just like
it hit and then just blew everything else out of the water. And then I'm like, okay, there's all these little things that work with it. So like the sort of the nod to prohibition and the, you know, the idea of the very, you know, swanky, β like cocktail bars and things like that. It's got a very sort of art deco vibe about it. And then, you know, when I started coming up with like the indexes, I'm like, in my head, it's a Rolodex.
And, you know, because it's got that sort of fan kind of shape about it. And, you know, it was probably invented in the twenties as well. So I've got like a, you know, this whole thing in my head where it all, it'll sort of, yeah, just dovetails together really nicely. It's, but yeah, was just, it was just one of those things that kind of comes out of the blue and you're like, yep, there is no other solution to this. This is how it has to be.
Fiona (30:31)
One other thing that strikes me about this and sort of the area that you've developed in, which I think lends to helping people with data. Recently, you've also won an award for women in innovation in South Australia for the data work you did on your Vyvanse locator work. I know that we're talking a little bit about IronViz at the moment, but is there something about
what you do in your spare time with visualization that really lends to trying to help people with data.
Heather (31:07)
I think I see problems and I want to solve them. And I'm not so sure that I'm interested in helping people as I am in solving the problem. Helping the people is kind of a happy side effect. β It's, yeah, it's one of those things that I, see this problem. like, why hasn't anyone else solved it yet? So let's jump in and, and sort something else.
Fiona (31:22)
your neck.
Heather (31:36)
so that we can, yeah, there's something to help these people, yeah, it's the problem. I like just jumping in and being really tenacious with that problem. mean, like's probably the wrong word. It's probably an inability to not.
Fiona (31:57)
A drive, a passion to solve.
Heather (31:59)
There you go.
That's a great word. β
Sarah (32:04)
you said some of your friends, family and colleagues have started using this visualization, what are some of the interesting outcomes you've seen from that?
Heather (32:14)
I've certainly heard a lot of I've never known so much about the glasses. β I you know, this is this is really interesting. I'm learning a lot while I'm going through it. I personally used it to fill my shopping list the other night so that I could grab a couple of extra ingredients. So finding that it's it's actually, you know, useful out in the wild, which is great.
So far I haven't heard anybody saying that they've actually made anything off of it yet, but yes, we'll see. We'll see. There you go.
Fiona (32:48)
Challenge accepted.
Sarah (32:49)
Exactly,
with summer coming, lots more entertaining going on in the southern hemisphere, so definitely a time to try some mocktails.
Heather (32:57)
That's it. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm assuming, you know, Thanksgiving in the Northern Hemisphere, Christmas, all those kinds of things. They'll have some stuff to celebrate.
Fiona (33:06)
Sure. Well, thanks so much for joining us today. It's been really great catching up and learning more about your story and your visualization as well. And we're looking forward to the next Data Fam member to come on.
We'll catch you soon.
Sarah (33:24)
Thanks Heather
Fiona (33:25)
All right. So we have our next DataFan member. We've got Ann Pregler and she is here to share with us some amazing insights into her IronViz submission. Ann is a two times Tableau ambassador and she's also won two Viz of the Days as well. So I'm super excited to hear her insights today.
Sarah (33:50)
Welcome Ann
Ann Pregler (33:50)
Great.
β great to be here.
Fiona (33:53)
Thanks for coming. Amazing.
Sarah (33:56)
Now, Ann, the art of telling a good story is sometimes knowing what to keep in and what to keep out. So when it came to your Iron Vis submission, what are some of the things that you did to make sure it was a cohesive story at the end?
Ann Pregler (34:16)
Yeah, that's a great question. So I'm going to share my screen and just take a look what we're talking about here. My viz this year is very long. This is actually very par for the course for me. My viz last year was long as well, but this is the full 10,000 pixel vertical limit that Tableau has. There's a lot here. But it might surprise you to hear that my initial plan for this, everything I have here was going to be one of three sections. I was going to explore two totally different things and bring them all together.
And what I found was as I was narrowing in on what was actually going to make a good story with good analysis and really keep attention to keep things interesting, I had to let a lot of stuff So I threw out two entire sections. There was a whole section here. My visit is about β food on the way to Mars. But I had a whole section about what about food when you get to Mars? What if you want to stay there for 10 years? How do you do food for that?
That was going be whole totally different topic and there just wasn't space and wasn't time to keep the story I wanted to tell with those elements. So my first takeaway and lesson I really learned this year was narrowing in on really small aspects to make it interesting. The other thing that I really had to do here was let go of a lot of stuff that I really loved. So I'll show you a quick example here.
Early on in my viz, I've got this very quick line that just says, it's nine months to Mars. Astronauts will spend a year on the planet waiting to return some food and supplies when we dropped off earlier. And really, this whole thing with the timeline of the trip to Mars is really interesting because it's all about orbital mechanics and when you can launch and how you can get there, the shortest route and when the planets align. And it's really fascinating. And I had this very cool arc diagram that was demonstrating that, how the pieces were going to come together.
And what I realized was that while that was super interesting, it didn't really have anything to do with the food and plants growing on the voyage, which is what my whole business is about. And so I had to let it go, replace it with just a single sentence, but then spend some more time digging into other aspects that were really, really relevant to that story.
Sarah (36:22)
Was that quite hard to let go? Because I'm thinking you probably invested in that visual.
Ann Pregler (36:28)
I loved that art diagram and they are not the easiest thing in the world to make. had like a template I was using and putting it all together and like I had spacers. I spent maybe maybe a day figuring out how to make that all work. And it was just beautiful and I had to let go of it. And yeah, it was hard. But I think the story in the end became a lot more cohesive for being able to kind of put some of those distractions aside.
Fiona (36:52)
You can deliver a part two in the future and really let it shine at that point because I think you're right, it is really important to edit things out and I'm really surprised that it's only nine months each way.
Ann Pregler (36:55)
I'm late, look.
Yeah, if you catch the right window, it's pretty fast. I will edit myself here as well and not dive into the mechanics of that. Maybe we're going to have a whole fizz coming of the orbital, the home, and transfer to get to Mars and how it works. β But yeah, with our current space field, it's actually pretty fast. And in the future, it might be faster.
Fiona (37:26)
So I'm curious about your visualization, Ann, because there's a few different elements that I can see and hear from a design perspective as well. We know that the judging for the feeder competition is on design, analysis, and storytelling. So we've heard that you did an excellent job of editing yourself down on the storytelling. From a design perspective, there's a couple of unique elements that I'm seeing in particular in your typography hierarchy.
Ann Pregler (37:33)
What?
Fiona (37:55)
and what we're seeing there. Could you just step us through some of the decisions that you've made?
Ann Pregler (38:00)
Yeah, I would love to talk about the design. β And actually it ties in kind of nicely because I had to do a lot of editing here too. My theme and sort of my mood board that I made for this was β had two big elements. And the first one was vintage NASA posters. β NASA, like in the 70s and 80s, they were trying to promote space travel. And so they created all of these cool like travel destination posters that go travel to stars, become an astronaut, work for us. And so elements like this big background up at the top here.
β are very pulled directly from those posters. Very sort of vintage style, β but that magic and wonder of space travel. But I had to hold myself back because I very much wanted to do the entire viz in that style. β And I was leaning towards doing a dark mode viz, which I've done several times before. But as I was considering the accessibility piece of the design and just the overall impact, I realized that
that would lean into the area that becomes more distracting than helpful if I had this very big dramatic background everywhere. So I knew that I wanted to add elements that really synched nicely with that, but that weren't as dramatic and keep kind of this big drama to just a couple little elements here like that header and these section headings. So where I kind of went was thinking about that same sort of timeframe, 60s, 70s, 80s, NASA reports.
And I looked at a lot of like blueprints. I looked at a lot of original typewritten reports. I used some of those reports actually for data for my business. Well, I found some reports that were literally written in the seventies that had data that I was pulling for things like β down here, the amount of food that astronauts ate, like the data from this Gemini mission came directly from a report about it. And I really use that concept of both typewriting. So I've got this courier font here that's calling to mind that original typewritten font.
And then also these hand drawn blueprint elements that I used as like, for example, section dividers here. I use these for labeling. And also in a lot of my visuals, I wanted to call that same effect. So like β these, form shots charts here are actually a dual axis where one version of the bubbles is just giving this very faint circle inside the other circle to make it look a little bit more hand drawn.
The other kind of choice here that again really comes down to editing. When I thought of using this Courier font, I was really excited and I wanted to use it everywhere. I wanted the whole thing to look like a blueprint and report and I was all about it. But again, I started thinking about that accessibility piece and the fact that Courier is lovely in small doses, but gets really hard to read when you have more than a line or two. And so I opted to pull myself back a little bit and use Montserrat, just kind of a more basic.
easy to read font for lot of heavier text sections and then intersperse those courier pieces just to add a little more visual interest and then also to kind of separate some of these chart elements from the text descriptions.
Sarah (41:09)
Yeah, nice. I like the way you've balanced it there. Like you said, you haven't gone overboard using that font. But it also like just looking at this one in particular, it's almost as if that little section could have come out of the 60s.
Fiona (41:23)
100%. And even the little hand drawn elements that you're talking about to really isolate each of the different visualizations. It's interesting just before this call, we were just talking about, you know, the best ways that we can isolate visualizations for a client as well. So I think this is just super artistic and beautiful, but not distracting. You know, it's, it's light enough that it's not, you know, drawing too much attention. But the whole
aesthetic around having this vintage feel. You know, the visualizations, for instance, it does remind me of something that it kind of throws me back to my primary school days almost of what might have been printed on old kind of paper and everything really. β But you've mentioned accessibility a couple of times and it's great because I think Tableau have also introduced that.
into judging criteria for getting through the feeder, which is awesome. In the past, they would never talk about this is how we judge you, or this is the kind of scoring that would go on. So you would have, you'd kind of be hitting and hoping and putting these things out here. do you consider accessibility a lot in your day-to-day job using Tableau?
Ann Pregler (42:42)
I really try to. I'm very much in the learning stage of this. I think you and I actually had a long debate about this, or discussion, not a debate, about accessibility in one of my posts recently, which was great. I try to incorporate the best practices I know and to learn more, but things that are pretty easy to do, like always using colorblind friendly palettes, using large enough font sizes, making sure there's enough contrast between the font and the background. I use those a lot day to day.
Fiona (42:50)
Mm-hmm.
Ann Pregler (43:12)
I recently learned about the alt text option for graphs. And so all of my visuals in this biz have alt text that is like describing, but then also the importance of using that to call out some of the insights that might only be visible in the chart. So folks using screen readers can still catch those insights. And that's something that I'm starting to incorporate more into my day to day as well. I'm lucky that right now I have a fairly, my current position, I have a very targeted user audience. And so I know their needs pretty well.
But when I'm designing for a broader audience, I try to amp up the level a little bit to make sure that I'm really hitting all of those boxes to try to get a broad array of people. And then just listening and learning and trying to understand more and how to do better.
Sarah (43:57)
Can we just pan down a little bit further Ann and take a look? Because I know you've been really conscious here about where you use color and I think it's really beautiful. You're kind of shying away from it and the visuals itself, but you're just giving that pop of color every now and again in the headings to keep some interest around. Can you talk through that decision?
Ann Pregler (44:15)
Yeah
Absolutely. I have been very into monochrome recently. It's kind of my thing at the moment. monochrome work. Because I think as I've evolved as a designer, I've begun to really see how color can be effective, but it can also be distracting if it's being used for pieces that aren't critical data. And so I've tried to be a lot more intentional, especially on this is about using color to highlight the really, really important stuff. So you see that in the section headings where I want some impact.
β You see that on a couple of these charts here, like these donut charts. This blue is still pretty mild. It's not monochrome, but it's pretty close to a gray. β But then you also see that in some of the interactivity here, which on the bee swarm. So like I've got these clickable food names, and when I click one, we get just a little bit of color. It takes a second. And so this color here is being used to highlight the food that I selected. And so...
I've found recently especially that because I've been using color less, it makes the impact when I do use it much stronger. Whereas when there's color everywhere, sometimes the impact of something really important can get diluted.
Fiona (45:33)
so exciting. It's really elegant and in design and I'm so grateful for you coming on and sharing your wisdom with us and getting into the details behind your design as well as that elegance that you have in the storytelling as well. Thank you so much for joining us today and we will pass over to our next one.
Ann Pregler (45:43)
Thank
Thank you.
Sarah (45:58)
To the next one.
Sarah (46:01)
We have the infamous Kimly Scott here with us today. She is, believe it or not, 19 Vis of the Days under her belt. She is an IronViz finalist from 2022, third time visionary, and a well-known Tableau ambassador as well. Welcome, Kimly.
Kimly (46:24)
Bye, thanks for having me guys.
Fiona (46:25)
Oh my God, that's an amazing list to go through and
some outstanding achievements there. But I always look forward to seeing when you've got a new visualization that's come out. And I was super excited to see that once again, you've put a submission in for IonViz. So thank you so much for coming on to the Undubbed PODDY I just want to start by... Let me do it again.
I just want to start by recognizing that you're so well known for your amazing design aesthetic. And when I read your submission story, I could really feel the connection, your connection to food. Can you start by sharing with us maybe your visualization and also where the design clicked for you? What was the moment it clicked for you when you were doing the development?
Kimly (47:24)
yep. So I'll bring up my visualization. well, when I first started looking at, β and well, when IronViz announcement came out, I was on the fence as to whether I was going to enter or not. and in the end I thought, stop it. I'm just going to enter. had this really nice idea or this really nice story in mind. something that I
kind of been mulling over for a while. Like I had this idea in my head, but I just couldn't get off the ground because β it's very data light. And if you see my visualization, had to be creative with the data, just to pad that out to have that analysis piece. So that's just kind of a little backstory on how this came about. But in terms of design,
I just wanted to share how some of the elements came together. So you notice that in the visualization, I've got some images of, you know, ingredients of food. And I think one thing that kind of stands out in the visualization, I'm just going to scroll down a bit, is the images of the dishes. And I guess this is the showcase of my visualization. I wanted to showcase, you know, Cambodian food,
A lot of people don't really know what it is and what it looks like. And, you know, I wanted to kind of bring that, bring that to the surface and bring that up. And when I was putting this all together, I didn't know how I was going to depict the images of food. So I said to my dad, can you make me all this food? I want to take photos of it. so he, the lovely dad that he is, he went ahead and, and, and cooked me, some Cambodian food so I could take photos. And I thought,
these photos turned out really good. I'm going to kind of crop them and kind of stylize them a bit and put them into my visualization. And I did, and that was my first iteration. I had photos in there to show examples of what the food looked like. And then I showed my sister the visit and she's like, she wasn't convinced. She's like, yeah, it looks good. But I think what you can try and do is draw some of these. Because I know you're really good at drawing and β
I had already had some kind of these hand drawn ingredients in there and she said, you know, if you have a go drawing the dishes, I think that would make the visualization look better. It would elevate it and it would take it up that next level. And I was a bit apprehensive because I'm like, this is a big undertaking. I draw in these little ingredients, chillies, that's easy, but these
dishes, they're so intricate, there's so many ingredients that go in the dishes. And I didn't want to kind of draw something that I know looks like, you know, noodle soup. But if someone else looks at it, they might not know it's noodle soup, because, they're not familiar with it. So she's like, just just just try it anyway. So I did. And the first thing I drew was the papaya salad, so the bok la hong.
And I sent it to her, I put it in my visualization and I sent like just a snippet of it to her. And she was like, this is so much better. This is amazing. it just really brought not just the food, but what it looks like, but the passion and my love of Cambodian food.
So I'm like, okay, well, I guess I've drawn one thing I'm gonna go and draw the other dishes. β And yeah, and I did. So I think, you know, that kind of design choice to keep it kind of sketchy, to keep it like a little bit, rough around the edges kind of fits in with the whole aesthetic of the visualization fits in with the color scheme. So you notice lots of greens. If you scroll through the images, there's lots of green dishes.
So the Numbajok, for instance, it's like a green kind of curry soup. So that's kind of where the color palette and all of those kind of β earthy type colors came in. Yeah, so that's the thinking and the choice behind, using those kind of sketchy hand drawn images. And I really liked the way that it turned out. I've gotten really good feedback from people in terms of
the style of the dishes and the drawings. So yeah, think I made a good choice and it was some really good feedback from my sisters to push me in that direction. So I'm glad I did it.
Fiona (51:37)
you totally nailed it. I and I love is this going to be the next version of the Flerlage twins? We're going to have the Scott sisters. Can I come in together? You know, is she is she particularly artistic as well?
Kimly (51:52)
she's probably going to kill me, she's not. She's not artistic. Yeah, she's my biggest cheerleader. So, she's always trying to push me and like get behind me and support me. β But yeah, no, she's not very creative. I show her these things that I've built in Tableau and she's like, that looks amazing. But I kind of really don't understand it. Like, data and, data visualization is not really her area.
Sarah (51:57)
She's at your muse. She can be your muse.
Fiona (51:58)
Visionary!
Kimly (52:19)
but she's really good at kind of writing. And she did give me lots of feedback in terms of my text. And she gave me lots of kind of β suggestions on, you should say it this way, or you should include this and exclude that. So yeah, maybe we could do a collaboration in terms of her doing the text. And I just build the pretty looking charts. Yeah.
Fiona (52:43)
Could work well, could work well. Yeah, I
love it. Like even just looking in this particular screen. So obviously the sketch is just gorgeous and you are super talented, but then taking the elements down into the legend key there and sort of sketching with that and using the colors in there as well. know, it really strings and draws everything together in such a perfect balance.
Kimly (53:11)
Yeah, well with that trip down memory lane, my initial thought was to use map layers to build those elements around the dish. And I had drawn those and had them against the photograph. And so I think that's what triggered her to tell me, β the kind of doesn't match. You've got this sketchy.
elements around it then you've got this photograph and I think that's kind of what prompted her to say well maybe you should try drawing the dishes instead and yeah yeah like I said it turned out well and I'm glad I did it.
Fiona (53:45)
And I love the fact that you also tricked your dad into cooking you lots of yummy food as well.
Kimly (53:49)
He does it anyway,
that's what he loves to do. I'm always over there, having dinner. I can't cook Cambodian food, which is a real shame because I love it so much. every time, every week we go over there and have, Cambodian dinner. But, when I caught him up, I'm like, yeah, can you make this and this and this and this? He's like, sure, I can make it. So yeah, that was great.
Sarah (54:13)
What a treat, what a treat. And something, Kimly, I've always noticed with your visual designs is just you're so good at balancing and giving that white space and it never feels overcrowded or confusing or anything. So what's some of the tricks you do to keep that in balance?
Kimly (54:34)
I think it does take a bit to get used to because you put it together and you see all this white space and you think, is that, you know, is that too much? Like, does it kind of feel like there's nothing there and people might get a bit bored, but it does take a bit of practice. And for me, I, I guess my trick is to like, add more space than you think you will need. from, from a design perspective, I think it helps to break things up and
I start with a big canvas because I know I'm going to have all that white space in there. β And what I do is β when I'm building the dashboard, β I put the grid lines in. So when I'm building these iron vis type dashboards, β it's all floating. So everything in there is all floating. I don't want to any fights here.
Fiona (55:21)
you
Kimly (55:25)
I just feel like it's easy for me to kind of move things around. Oh, it doesn't look good there. I'm going to move it over here. But I use the grid lines and I use that to help me pad out the elements. So if I've got the heading in there, I might say, oh, I'm going to put 10 rows of the grid line and then I'm going to put something else. And then I'll use that as a measure, like throughout the rest of the visualization. So it would be like,
In between each text and each heading, I'm going to have five rows. In between the image and the text, I'm going to have a certain number of rows. And on the sides, I want it in the middle. So I think it was like 10 or 16 rows on each side. So using those grids to help lay it out. And what I also find that's really helpful is when you...
downloading or exporting the visualization as you go. So you can see what it looks like, you know, in a, like in one screen. Like one thing I don't like about Tableau is that you can't zoom in and out when you're, when you're designing. So I like to kind of, you know, export, export the image, zoom out, see what it looks like. there's not much room in between, you know, this heading and this title. I'm going to go in and make it a bit bigger or, there's way too much room here. I'm just going to shrink it. So, you know, having that kind of bird's eye view allows you to
take in the elements and see what doesn't fit and what fits.
Sarah (56:49)
Yeah, nice. Some great tips there on using the grid. Not sure about using floating all the time. I'm guessing for something like this. I'll say it's okay. Yeah, floating for fun.
Kimly (56:59)
I like
Fiona (57:00)
Floating for fun?
Kimly (57:03)
that. I like that. I wouldn't dare use floating like in my business dashboards at work, but certainly for something like this, like I don't even know how I could tile this particular visualization.
Fiona (57:16)
Lots of padding tricks. β
I'm around the sketches a little bit more so I know we haven't gone too much into the story yet but the sketches are just so beautiful. What tool are you using to sketch?
Kimly (57:34)
You're gonna laugh.
You're gonna laugh when I tell you. It's just drawing on my trackpad. So I just open up Figma and I'll have a picture to help to have as reference. And I just use my trackpad to draw with my finger. I don't have an Apple pencil. My daughter stole my iPad years ago along with the Apple pencil. So I've just started to learn how to use a trackpad.
Fiona (57:49)
β
Sarah (57:50)
Wow.
Kimly (58:02)
It does take a while to get used to, but β yeah, like I can draw like lines and, you know, the colors and the shading. And I think Figma is really nice because β that the drawing icon or the drawing tool allows me to kind of, you know, if I draw something and the outline is too dark or too thick, I can scale it down. So you can kind of edit. β
as you go, if I've kind of drawn something a bit wonky, I can go in and like straighten it. So it just makes it easy for you to kind of fix up some mistakes that you've made along the way. yeah, Figma and my trackpad.
Fiona (58:40)
Wow.
Sarah (58:42)
My
gosh, I couldn't imagine doing it like that, but it's even more amazing now.
Kimly (58:49)
This is
Fiona (58:49)
impressive.
Kimly (58:50)
low-fi, low-fi. think I did, I have tried using like the Apple Pen on the iPad, but I felt like there's a bit of a delay in like when you press down and draw to where it, when it comes up on the screen. And that really, really put me off. yeah, it, wasn't, I couldn't get used to that. So it's like, that's, yeah, I stopped using, using the pencil.
Fiona (59:15)
Yeah, they're very, very beautiful. I do want to step into the storytelling a little bit because we all know that in INVIS, it's really important to cover the three different areas, design, analysis, and storytelling. And just looking at this top part here, where you start to link into the neurobiology.
Kimly (59:29)
Mm-hmm.
Fiona (59:40)
and you know really about that emotional connection that we get with food both from a taste perspective and a smell as well. When you're approaching this idea like what's the process to think about how you're bringing the story together and stringing each of those elements which is then going to translate into visual aspects.
Kimly (59:48)
Yeah.
β That's a good question and I don't know how I'm gonna answer that.
Fiona (1:00:13)
It's a toughie! Like, do
you start with, I wanted to talk about, you know, food that's important to me and that I have a connection with, how am I going to frame this and then went into this? Or did you start with, there's a really interesting aspect to food and the brain.
Kimly (1:00:34)
I started with that aspect. So β I started off with the link between food and memory. And that's what I started researching β when I first thought of this topic. And β I found a couple of kind of articles that talked about it and β there were like one or two studies, but it was all kind of like such a psychological and it was hard.
for people to measure because it was like having interviews with people and asking them, what sort of foods, take you back to your childhood, what are the types of feelings that you feel when you eat a certain food or when you smell a certain smell. And so the data was really, really light on and I found it hard to come up with a full story just around that link.
And then I thought back to my own life and the foods that I used to eat and then all of the memories that come back to you when you eat those foods. And I thought, well, that's something that I can use to pad the story and bring in that whole kind of culture link as well because food is very cultural. Cambodian food is very cultural as well.
a type of food that we all kind of sit down and share a meal together. when I married my husband, like when we got together, know, Australians, he's Australian. And so they all have their own like separate plates. And to me, that was really, really weird because when I used to eat with my family, you know, we'd have our bowl of rice, but we would share, soups and stews and we would sit down and eat together.
And yeah, having the individual place was just really foreign to me. And so I thought, bringing in that culture element, showcasing the food that I love will bring in, that β humanistic side of it as well. Bring in my story, make it a bit more personal. And then I had this idea of like, well, what if I asked other people, you know, it's such a phenomenon that exists and, you know, you talk to people and
Fiona (1:02:19)
you
Kimly (1:02:46)
when they start to think about it, they're like, well, you know, I used to do this or I to eat this with my with my grandma or whatever. And then when you have it now as an adult, you know, you go back to to that time when you were β when you were little and and you know, when you were with that person. So it's really interesting the the people that gave me quotes here, that the food that they ate, it was it's tied to a person. here in this example, and, know, sweet basil, that that
brings her back to her grandmother and being with and spending time with her grandmother. So I think that, you know, that whole kind of humanistic side and having that, β those, those human stories really kind of adds weight to the storytelling. So yeah, that's kind of how I approached it and my thinking as I went through, the research and the data collection and, and, and putting the story together. β
had a bit of trouble the flow of the story, like I had different things in different sections. But then, you know, I ultimately settled on this storybook type, storytelling, where, you've got your prologue, talking about that link setting the scene, like, this is something that is that is common. And it's, something that happens in our brain, and then having the different chapters β underneath it.
Yeah, so that's how that came about.
Sarah (1:04:07)
Yeah, really lovely. And I do really love the flow and the way kind of you go down it. And also having that personal touch as well is something that we don't always see in these visualizations. I think that's really powerful.
Kimly (1:04:22)
Yeah, and I think, like, it's, I just feel like you know yourself the best. so like, putting yourself into the visualisations, like, you know, that β that's, what's the word? Like, it's, it's, β it's that insight that that you have on yourself that you kind of want to share. β And, like, you know, you don't need to go looking for lot of research.
like that story is there.
Sarah (1:04:53)
Yeah.
Fiona (1:04:53)
Yeah,
it's like it's natural, right? It comes from within and that self reflection. When you were talking about Anne's grandmother and the sweet basil, immediately I was thrown to my grandmother and what she used to cook and she was quite heavy handed with the salt. so occasionally when I need to feel that comfort sort of food, I'll have something that's a little bit saltier and it will...
Kimly (1:04:56)
Yeah, exactly. That is a much better way to put it.
Fiona (1:05:21)
remind me of that, of sort of being wrapped up in granny's arms and, you know, feeling really good.
Kimly (1:05:25)
Yeah, yeah,
that's really nice. That's really sweet. And I think like there's just like that that that trigger is so strong. Even like smells and sounds, not just the taste like it really takes you back.
Fiona (1:05:43)
Yeah, for sure. Some great memories there. And thank you so much for joining us today on Undubbed. We've really learned a lot and it's been really wonderful to see you come back into the IronViz space. So we'll be looking on with eagle eyes to see how this progresses. Congratulations. It's an amazing submission and it really does hit you right to the core with a few of those emotions. So thank you.
Kimly (1:06:08)
Thank you so much.
Sarah (1:06:10)
Yeah, it's amazing,
Kim Lee. Thank you for sharing that with us today.
Kimly (1:06:14)
No worries, thank you so much.
Sarah (1:06:19)
Wow, what a start. I loved hearing the why behind these entries. Not just the data or the design, but the passion and purpose driving them.
Fiona (1:06:29)
Yeah, and that courage it takes to actually hit submit, knowing that you're putting your creativity out there for the world to see, that's brave.
Sarah (1:06:40)
Totally. And the good news, we're just getting started. Part two dives even deeper into the craft, the storytelling, and the lessons learned along the way.
Fiona (1:06:51)
So you know the drill, make sure you're followed undubbed, give us a like or a rating and share this with anyone thinking about entering Ionviz or just doing a great data visualization.
Sarah (1:07:03)
Cause you never know, it might just be the nudge they need.
