Viz Games

Setting a theme up front is important because it will help guide you while building out the rest of the competition. Themes for Viz Games competitions are typically around a particular topic, dataset, business problem, chart/dashboard type, or feature. Get creative, and challenge the participants in a way that is fun and engaging!

Books and Literature

Health and Wellbeing

Water

Tailored to you and your business. Focus people’s attention on one area of your day-to-day, and allow them to bring data from different sources to help solve whatever that problem might be.

Business dataset – provide your participants with a dataset

Theme isn’t the only thing to consider when looking for example datasets - size and shape are factors too. Typically large datasets (both rows and columns) offer more opportunities for deep analysis and storytelling. Here are some resources you can share with participants:

Get your data Tableau-ready

Where to find data

Tableau web data connectors

Vizzes are often most interesting when the author started with a question that they were curious about, rather than using a dataset as a starting point. Encourage people to make it about something that one can learn from the data, rather than a collection of random facts.

Looks at things like the question(s) that are being asked and the insights the viz provides. In more detail: the type of data used, the type of charts used, the type of aggregation and statistical analysis used. How sophisticated and - more importantly - appropriate for the story/question that is being answered are these?

Obviously looks at how “nice” a viz looks. But a few things to watch out for are layout and flow, use of whitespace (or lack thereof), colors and decorations. What design elements contribute to engagement and speed to insight? Finally how appropriate is the design for the story that is being told?

Of course this is the way that we run it – choose a scoring system that’s appropriate for you, your organization and your situation.

Looks at things like: whether the context of the topic is clear, the question(s) are clear, is it clear how one moves through the viz and from question to answer? Basically does it highlight what is interesting, where that is in the viz, and why that matters? All of that can be done in different ways, using color coding, text boxes, pictograms, annotations, or story points, etc., so be open-minded here.

A scoring sheet is provided to contest judges in order to determine a winner. Depending on how the submission form was created, you may be able to export the submissions to spreadsheet/csv which would make it simple to create a scoring sheet. Here is an example of what that scoring sheet might look like.

Notice also the feedback column. We’ve found contestants often are very happy to have their work critiqued. You may want to have people opt in to receive feedback, and of course do consider how the feedback will be delivered. It’s advisable to make it available to the participant privately. In the case of multiple judges, scores are added up across each category and each judge – i.e. in a scenario with 3 judges a viz would score XX/90 points.

Set judges up for success by describing the scoring parameters. Definitions of scoring parameters are provided above, but some additional context may be necessary to help judges differentiate a 0 from a 10. For any category, 10 would be the best you have ever seen in your life and a 0 means the participant did nothing. You can see some examples of scores from a recent competition hosted by Tableau Public. Hover over the bar chart to see average scores, and click to view that viz.

A landing page serves as the primary point of reference for information regarding dates, topic, and how to participate. It helps to provide some examples of other visualizations, datasets, or data sources to help participants get a better idea of what resources are easily available. You may be amazed by the creativity of your Tableau community if you give them just enough help to get started.

Make it easy for participants to understand how to participate. You want participants’ focus on making a great data visualization rather than struggling to find data or where to submit their creation. On your landing page, concisely walk them through the contest.

The promotion phase is all about generating awareness. Whether it’s by email or word-of-mouth, you have to connect with the audience you want to engage. If the competition is internal to your organization, consider posting announcements to internal sites or your company message boards, or holding an in-person contest launch party. And if the competition extends beyond your organization, use hashtags on social media and post about the competition on public forums. The goals of the promotion phase are to raise awareness and to drum up enthusiasm for the contents.

Participants may need a place to submit their work depending on the context of the competition. If required, submission forms typically include Name, Email, and a link to the viz on Tableau Server or Tableau Public. Only ask your contestants to publish their submissions to Tableau Public when the data they’re using can be in the public domain. If the data is private (such as if the contest involves your organization’s data), have them submit a link to their viz on your server, Tableau Cloud, or by attaching the workbook itself.

You can see an example Viz Games submission form  here. Google/Sharepoint forms are a simple way of collecting this information, but of course it’s up to you!