Data visualization for kids in Power BI
Inspiring children to engage with data.
Making data fun for kids!
I came across a very interesting data visualization challenge from the storytelling with data community: Graph for Kids. Typically, my work revolves around creating graphs that inform and drive decision-making for a business audience. This challenge, however, was quite refreshing, aiming to make data fun and engaging for children.
The challenge
The task is to create a graph that is appealing to children or involves them in the process. Since I don’t have children, I decided to create something that would be interesting to them. My goal was to make data visualization informative and engaging for a younger audience.
Credits: Background image and divers are vectors from Vecteezy.
Approach
Since I don’t have children of my own, this was a bit of a stretch for me. However, it was a nice change of perspective. To make the visuals appealing to a younger audience, I incorporated more colors, a playful theme, and clear titles to capture their interest.
I chose to use Power BI as the data visualization tool. All the visuals are native visuals and can be used by everyone.
- The filter: This is the new Slicer visual with the URLs of the divers as Field.
- The bar chart: These are 2 bar charts next to each other (when you zoom in you can see there is still some overlap)
- The data labels on the bar charts are emoticons (Windows + . to open the emoticon options)
- This visualization relies heavily on bookmarks. The diver in the bar chart changes based on the filter selection. I put a transparent shape on top of the divers in the filter, which triggers the bookmark.
Design Elements
I use emoticons (🐬🐢🐙) to represent the animals to make the visual more engaging. This makes the graph more appealing and can help children learn the names of different sea creatures in a fun and memorable way. Additionally, if they can’t read at the current stage, they can still see the animal.
I also chose to put the diver selected in the filter next to its bar in the visual. Additionally, I added a reference line; this way, it is easy to see the difference between the diver and the sea creatures.
Ideas I had (and did not incorporate)
When creating visuals, I always have tons of ideas. But since time is short and I can’t do everything, these ideas sometimes remain ideas.
- Allowing children to input their height could make the comparison more personalized and exciting.
- The arrow pointing to a shape saying “You selected [name]” could be bubbles and the name could be in the biggest bubble.
- Switching between meters and feet.
- Choosing more sea creatures (filter selection).
Disclaimer & Credits
I’m aware that animals’ lengths vary depending on species, age, and habitat. I used a rough average.
Credits for illustrations: I got the background image and the image of the diver from Vecteezy. These are vector images I edited. They were created by Matt Cole (divers) and Subin Duangdee (background image).