In light of this year’s Great British Bake Off coming to an end and Sophie being crowned this series’ winner, I decided to create an interactive visualisation in Tableau for people to cast their own vote on which finalist they think should have won. To gather initial data the vis was sent around the DataConsulting team for each of us to cast our votes. The visualisation continues to be live for anyone wishing to cast their own opinions and see for themselves how this interactive visualisation works. Results are automatically updated and refreshed every 24 hours.
The table on the left displays which contestant gained star baker or was eliminated each week. Using features in Tableau I made any star baker display a gold star, and any eliminations a red cross. The table becomes more interactive when a user highlights a symbol, displaying further information on where that contestant placed in the technical challenge and what their showstopper was. I also included an image of all the contestants in this series at the bottom for reference.
To create a live voting system that could be linked into Tableau for anyone to use, I decide to create a poll on google documents for users to cast a vote for their favourite finalist. To connect the google poll into the dashboard for this vis, I established a link for each of the finalists from their photos. When a photo is clicked, the user is directed to the google poll with their chosen contestant selected by default. I decided to leave the remaining two contestants’ names on all poll pages in case a user clicked the wrong photo, or changed their mind and wanted to vote for someone else instead.
With the poll active, anytime a vote is cast, it automatically updates the timestamp and name to a google sheet which is then linked as a data source back into Tableau. Information is displayed as the bar chart in the bottom right of the dashboard, which sums the number of votes presented in the google sheet. So far, it seems our office seems to be leaning towards Steven as their winner!
