Conditional Data Visualization Using Google Data Studio

In this article, we will learn how to do Conditional Data Visualization using Google Data studio. 

Before moving forward, let’s understand the title itself.

Data visualization 

Data visualization is all about getting useful insights from the data through graphical media or visuals.  When data is presented in a visual format. It becomes easy and quick to interpret. Data visualization forms the basis of Business Intelligence. 

For that, we can use different types of plots like bar plot, scatterplot, etc.

Conditional Data Visualization

Conditional Data Visualization is used when we need to present “filtered” data to cater to user-specified conditions. Example: Suppose you wish to exhibit salaries of the employees of a company where salary >60,000. This is useful to focus only on certain data of the user’s interest.

Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio (GDS) is a data visualization tool made available on the cloud platform by Google. It assists to develop interactive data dashboards. It is a free-to-use tool with key features like a vast range of sources that can be connected as an input to it, gives a wide range of visuals that can be configured in many ways to represent information, various features like filters and page-level controls that deliver flexibility in visualizing the information, etc.

Let us first understand, the steps to connect to Google Data Studio.

Search for Google Data Studio

Search  for “Google Data Studio” in your browser and sign in there with your Google account.   Click on “+” sign to add blank report. (data report also called as Data Dashboard is output from the GDS). Next it will  ask you for your source data meaning that data source for which to wish create visuals. Let us keep our data in Google Spreadsheet. So, create a Google Spreadsheet with following data of employees. [Position of Person-Yrs. of Experience-Salary in Rs. ]

Connection with Google Sheets

Click on “Google Sheets” and select the created file “Emp” as the data source. Add this to your report. The Google Data Studio, automatically generates  the default visual as a Table as shown in following figure.

Adding Visuals

From the Chart menu, select Dimension (Aspect of visualization) as ‘Position’ and Metric (Quantity in visualization) as ”Salary to be paid’.  Then the visual is refreshed to show selected data. 

Conditional Filtering

Conditional Filtering means that we need to present only part of data that suits to user defined condition. Means we need to filter specific data. For this we need to create a filter. So from the “chart” menu, click on “Add Filter” button. Here specify filter name and condition on metric field. Say: SalaryAbove60K. The GDS environment allows you to create the filters for variety of numerical and string data types. 

Once you apply filter to the data, the table-visual gets refreshed and shows the filtered data. 

You can reuse the filter to various all the visuals that you may create.  You just have to select the filter name you created in the “Filter” property of the visual. The Bar-Chart shown below also uses the filter created earlier as SalaryAbove60K.

Thus you can create simple Filters to present Conditional Visualization as per user’s requirement. The filters can be applied page-wise also. Meaningful extraction of the information is possible with the availability of the feature of Filters.