Data Visualisation and Communication for Business Professionals

Overview

Data Visualisation and Communication for Business Professionals

In the final project, you are required to identify the focus of the project topic, the research questions, the data you are planning to use, the expected contribution of the project and write a detailed report demonstrating the major findings of your data analysis. The word count of the report will be approximately 2500 words (excluding the appendix).

The following brief explanation demonstrates what you need to do under each specific task of the final project.

1) Topic of the project

Select a topic that you are very interested in and can also get good data. You can choose any topic that you would like to explore in this project. When you choose your project topic, make sure that the focus is not too wide or too narrow. Furthermore, the topic should not be very far from business and economics areas.

2) Research questions

You need to write 3-5 specific research questions that you would like to investigate in the project.

3) Find a good dataset.

Find a dataset that you will use for the project. The dataset will be used to create different visuals, and dashboards of the final project. The dataset can be collected from government websites, international institutions, and private data source. Ideally, the selected data should be suitable to make any type of visual (e.g., chart, graph, map, or table). Please note that the dataset should be a rich dataset. This means, it should not be too small (like less than 100 rows) or it should not be too large (like millions of rows). We also encourage to think about the type of visualizations (chart, graph, map, or table) that you will create in the future when you choose the data. If you do not know a good data to access, you may consider the following data sources:

Eurostat: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/main/data/databa... 2 Eurostat contains all detailed datasets that are publicly available. They are presented in so-called multi-dimensional datasets.

The Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE): https://www.bitre.gov.au/statistics BITRE provides statistics on infrastructure, transport, and other economic issues of Australia.

The world development indicators (WDI): https://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development... WDI is the World Bank’s premier compilation of high-quality cross-country data on development. The database contains 50 years data for more than 1,600 variables for over 200 countries and 45 regions.

World Bank enterprise survey data (It can be accessed here) The Enterprise Surveys use standard survey instruments to collect firm-level data on the business environment from business owners and top managers. The surveys cover a broad range of topics including access to finance, corruption, infrastructure, crime, competition, labor, obstacles to growth, and performance measures. Data is available for several developing and emerging economies. Please contact me if you need the data either for Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, Poland, Turkey, or Vietnam.

World Integrated Trade Solutions (WITS) https://wits.worldbank.org/Default.aspx?lang=en: The WITS platform provides access to international merchandise trade, tariff and non-tariff measures (NTM) data. Detailed product level export, import and tariff data is available for several countries for a long period of time.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) https://www.abs.gov.au/: ABS provides access to a wealth of public data on economy, labour, industry, health, Covid-19, and other datasets.

Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/

Kaggle: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets

4) Contribution of the project

Who would be benefited from your visual analysis? In other words, who is your potential audience. Make sure to identify a specific audience that will be benefitted from your project. You should also briefly comment how your future data visualization analysis will provide actionable insight useful to make evidence-based decisions for your potential audience.

5) Data visualization analysis and interpretation

Next, using the Tableau software and the dataset you have already selected, you are required to create different charts, figures, maps, and Dashboards that would effectively answer your specific research questions. When you create and design the visuals, you need to apply data visualization best practices discussed in the course. Finally, you need to present a detailed interpretation of each visual, and explain the key insights discovered in the visual analysis. Please consider the following questions when you create and design your data visuals:

➢ Have you employed the most effective visual types to demonstrate the key insights (trends, relationships, patterns, outliers, etc) you have discovered in your preliminary visual analysis?

➢ Have you identified and eliminated clutter in your preliminary visuals?

➢ Have you effectively leveraged the Gestalt principles of visual perception, alignment, white space, and contrast to improve your preliminary data visuals?

➢ Have you effectively applied preattentive attributes to focus your audience’s attention and creating a visual hierarchy of information?

➢ Have you used highlighter, reference line, parameters, filters and tooltips to perfect your visual works?

➢ What is the big idea of each data visual? Please include the big idea in the chart using a single, clear, and concise statement.

6) Project report

You should submit a project report in word document (.doc or .docx), which contains the visuals (charts, figures, or tables), the context of your data analysis (who, what and how), the interpretation of the visuals, and the key insights discovered in the data visuals. You are also expected to make specific guidance and policy recommendation to your potential audience, based on your data visualization analysis. The project report should include title page, introduction, method and data, analysis and discussion, conclusion, and reference sections. Please refer to the attached rubric for additional information about the project. Make sure also that you include your full name and student ID on the rubric form and submit it along with your final project.

Please note that assignments submitted after the due date, without an authorised extension, will receive a penalty of 10% a day deducted from the total available mark for the assignment for up to a maximum of 7 calendar days. After 7 calendar days the assignment will no longer be accepted and will be assigned a zero grade inclusive of non-graded pass work.