Google Data Studio – Art of Data Visualization : What, Why, How?

Google Data Studio – Art of Data Visualization : What, Why, How?

Introduction 

Data visualization gives us a clear idea of what the information means by giving it visual context through maps or graphs. This makes the data more natural for the human mind to comprehend and therefore makes it easier to identify trends, patterns, and outliers within large data sets. It is not important only to the discipline of Information Technology and Computer Science but it is also useful to each industry.     

Any company should know about the progress trend in the past 5 to 10 years to represent their company’s growth. To represent it simply, graphs should be used. Thus, data visualization is showing the statistics in the simplest way possible (i.e. Graphs). As we are exposed to 5 times more information than in 1986, our brain has to process faster. The visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text by our brains. Also, visual data is read 30 times more than plain text. 

 In this blog, we are addressing the GDS, as one of the prominent Data Visualization tools among many in the market including Power BI, Tableau, Qlik etc.                   

What is Google Data Studio? 

Google Data Studio (GDS) is an online tool for converting data into customizable informative reports and dashboards introduced by Google on March 15, 2016 as part of the enterprise Google Analytics 360 suite. In May 2016 Google announced a free version of Data Studio for individuals and small teams.

GDS is a cloud based data visualization tool. So, you can access anywhere from any device.  Hence,  it turns data into informative dashboards and reports that are easy to read, easy to share, and fully customizable.

What can you do Using GDS? 

• Tell your data story with charts, including line, bar, and pie charts, geo maps, area and bubble graphs, paginated data tables, pivot tables, and more.
• Make your reports interactive with viewer filters and date range controls. The data control turns any report into a flexible template report that anyone can use to see their own data.
• Include links and clickable images to create product catalogs, video libraries, and other hyperlinked content.
• Annotate and brand your reports with text and images.
• Apply styles and color themes that make your data stories works of data visualization art.

Why do we use it?

Be it at any position in a company, one has to represent data using certain visuals. With the abundance of data, data handling becomes critical. GDS helps you read the anomalies and patterns in a lucid way. GDS is a great tool that can be used to speed up analytics of your data. One can use custom formulas to dig deeper and build automated, interactive dashboards and reports. These factors will enable efficient data communication.

What do you need to start?

How Google Data Studio Works?

GDS  operates on three core principles – Connect , Visualize and Share

Connect:

Connecters are required to get started. There are Multiple Data source available to connect any data into the data studio. Connectors are the link between your raw data and studio datasets.

Visualize:

Choose a dataset. Generate dashboards and reports based on selected dataset.

Share:

Once a report & dashboard are  generated, one can also  share it like normal Google drive documents. Also, a PDF of the same can be downloaded.Summary:

GDS offers different aspects of data visualization. It comes with ease of operation, shorter learning curve and powerful visual impact. Although GDS came in just recently, it is growing with each coming day against other data visualization tools.    

Source: https://support.google.com/datastudio/answer/6283323?hl=en

Author:   Team Cilans