Sample Talks - Reproducible Interactive Dashboard Design Using R and R Markdown - ACME 2022 Workshop

Author

Zhenning “Jimmy” Xu

Below is a summary of the workshop presentation I delivered at the ACME marketing conference in 2022.

Get Started

Please find the interactive dashboard you will be trying to build below

Link to the dashboard we will be building together - https://rpubs.com/utjimmyx/Flexdashboard_2021

Examples of complex dashboards

  • How California Uses Shiny in Production to Fight COVID-19 - https://www.rstudio.com/blog/using-shiny-in-production-to-monitor-covid-19/

  • A simulation dashboard I built using ShinyR - https://utjimmyx.shinyapps.io/bullwhip2/

Using R or R Studio for data analytics and reporting

Assumptions

  • you have a laptop and stable internet connections
  • you can Google search
  • you used Excel before

R has an awesome community

  • There are thousands of Meetup groups around the world
  • The Meetup I started organizing from 2019- https://www.meetup.com/Bakersfield-Data-Analytics-Using-R-Meetup-Group/

What are we going to cover today?

  • What is a dashboard?
  • Why R or R Studio?
  • Why R Markdown?
  • Interactive plotting and mapping using R
  • Modern dashboard design packages (e.g., the modern react js web framework) available in R
  • Hands-on exercise - Design your own dashboard using Flexdashboard

It is important to be familiar with R Studio before you can understand the options in dashboard design using Flexdashboard, Plotly, Mapbox, ShinyR, etc.

  • Come on… You do not need to pay hefty subscription fees for SPSS, SAS, and Tableau anymore! Well, R allows you to do everything you need to do in data analytics, big data analytics, and machine learning.

Easy dashboard with Flexdashboard?!

Why using a dashboard?

  • Cool and easy way to create a dashboard without paying subscription fees
  • Uses R Studio (or R Studio Cloud; free) and R Markdown (free)

Benifits

  • CSS stylization; htmlwidgets; base, lattice, and grid graphics; tabular data; gauges and value boxes; and text annotations
  • row and column-based layouts
  • Interactive and easy to adapt for purposes.

You can see an introduction to Flexdashboard here its homepage. You should read the information and try it on your own at least once to know how to

  • create a R Markdown document;

  • format a document (e.g. text alignment);

  • configure the layout;

  • and most importantly, Google search and use Stackoverflow or Stackoverexchange.

Design interactive maps using R packages like Leaflet, Mapbox, etc.

library(leaflet)
m <- leaflet() %>% addTiles()
m %>%
  # Central Park
fitBounds(-73.9, 40.75, -73.95,40.8)

Let’s design an interactive dashboard together!

  • Steps and procedures
  • How to use R Studio Cloud?
  • R Studio Cloud - Register (or log into the platform using your email credentials) - > File -> New File -> R Markdown -> Install packages - > click the “knit” button -> Publish results
  • Please copy my syntax at my Github website
  • Introduction to the dataset
  • Install the packages
  • Register an account at Rpubs.com
  • Publish your results as an HTML page for free

It is important to be familiar with R Studio before you can understand the options in dashboard designusing Flexdashboard, Plotly, mapbox, ShinyR, etc.

Come on… You do not need to pay hefty subscription fees for SPSS, SAS, and Tableau anymore! Well, R allows you to do everything you need to do in data analytics, big data analytics, and machine learning.

Thanks!

Slides for today can be accessed at my Rpubs.com website rpubs.com.

Syntax for our dashboard design tutorial can be accessed at my Github website my Github website.