2021 Week 18: Can You Performance Tune This Workbook?

Learning complex techniques and beautiful design is super important to mastering visual analytics.  But, nothing will stop a user from regularly and joyfully using a dashboard than a poor performing one.  It doesn’t matter if it looks like Michaelangelo designed it or it has the cure for some crazy infectious disease – if it takes more than 5 seconds to load, most people will take their chances without your dashboard and hit the ‘x’ on the browser tab. 

Think I’m being dramatic?  I wish I were.  People are busy, have things competing for their attention, and are used to web pages that load in under a second.  So, when something takes more than 5 seconds to load – people assume it’s broken and move on.  For those that hang in there, they’re frustrated for their wait before they even look at what you’ve built.  The general rule is 3 seconds or less – the closer to zero, the better.  

So, this challenge is all about performance optimization.  Speed is the name of the game.  The initial workbook will be like watching paint dry or crawling on glass – just painful.  For reference, the slow workbook will take between 2ish minutes to load, depending on your computer.

Key Context/Hint: 

1. The end user only cares about OB/GYNs.  
2. Save some time and download the slow workbook and use as your base to optimize.