Google Data Studio Case Studies

Kiwi Metrics white logo

Data Studio dashboard example – How we augmented Kiwi Metrics’ web app

5

Google Data Studio dashboards

100+

charts & community visualizations

2M+

cells in the Google Sheet data source

About Kiwi Metrics

Kiwi Metrics is a platform that reinforces culinary processes using data science.

They give chefs and food scientists a way for prototyping recipes and for watching culinary trends. 

Check out their features and read on to see what we cooked for them. We included an actual Data Studio dashboard example.

Kiwi Metrics logo

Data Sources We Used:

data studio with google sheets

Google Sheets (.csv export from MySQL)

Client's Industry:

Culinary Innovation & Analytics

the Client's Goal

Kiwi Metrics has access to a huge amount of food data. They wanted to be able to tell a story with all this data.

They decided to opt for Google Data Studio for its versatility and for the reason we all opt for it – it’s free.

The dashboards’ main goal was to augment their web application and to address the questions the first-time users had about the web app before they became paid subscribers. 

Your data is beautiful. It just needs a makeover

Let us create better-looking, more effective data visualizations for your projects that will feast your eyes every day

Our strategy

1. Restructuring the data - Long is better than wide

If you want to make your process of working with Data Studio easier (and of course you do!), make sure you organize your data properly. Google recommends that you limit the number of dimensions by grouping data into categories, rather than adding each possible value in a separate column. 

For example, Kiwi Metrics had this structure:

What we did:

  1. Split the data into multiple worksheets.
  2. Restructured the data in a long table by grouping the data series into dimensions:

If you want to know how you can restructure your Google Sheets data from a wide format to a long one, ask us how we did it on Facebook or LinkedIn.

2. Enabling comparisons with charts and community visualizations

We needed the ability to compare manufacturers, ingredients and categories with each other, similar to how the Kiwi Metrics web app works. Here’s an example that compares pizza (yum!) and cheese, and uses scorecards to display the nutrition values for each category.

Since the data Kiwi Metrics had was hierarchical but incorrectly structured for Data Studio, they had difficulty visualizing it with some of the more advanced visualizations. 

After the data restructure, we managed to use the community visualizations and integrate them as an important part of the dashboard. Click on the video below to see how we used the sunburst visualization from r42 communication to show the hierarchy between foods, their health effects, and their micronutrients. 

Other widgets / charts that we used:

  • Scorecards
  • Bar charts and stacked bar charts
  • Pie charts
  • Treemaps.

3. Building a simple, user-friendly and uncluttered dashboard

For every dashboard, we work with laws of UX in mind. For Kiwi Metrics we spread out the report across multiple pages into individual categories.

We also nurtured interface familiarity. Each page starts with a high-level summary data at the top while the following widgets provide just the right amount of specific and granular data. By creating the dashboard in this way, the users are gradually guided through the report. 

the Deliverables -
Our Actual Data Studio Dashboard Example

We promised at the beginning of this case study that we will show you the final product we delivered to the Kiwi Metrics team – a real Data Studio dashboard example. They gave us permission to share it with the world, so here it is!

For the best experience, we recommend that you take a look at it on a computer. 

Kiwi Metrics Knowledge Engineering Dashboard

Hover over the bottom left corner for the option to shuffle between the different pages of the dashboard, like this:

Mike Kuehne Kiwi Metrics

I loved working with you! Professional, kind and thoughtful. Couldn’t have asked for anything more.

Your work speaks for itself, you’re lightning fast with an eye for detail. The regular updates you sent and the documentation you included during the project were above and beyond what I expected.

Mike Kuehne

Owner of Kiwi Metrics

That's a Wrap!

Kiwi Metrics’s web app connects millions of disparate food manufacturing related data points, published by the US government to help provide transparency in food nutrition.

By using these Data Studio dashboards, their potential clients have the possibility to get a taste of the web application’s paid benefits.

Any quiche-tions? Drop a salami! Sorry, drop us a lime. A liiiine.

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