Project Guidelines

In this project, your group will create an interactive dashboard using R shiny or Quarto shiny dashboards. Additionally, each group member will individually write a “data scientist’s statement” (400-800 words) that communicates the intention behind the created work.

Requirements of the dashboard:

  • Relies on at least one real-world dataset.
  • At least three user inputs.
  • At least two reactive graph or maps.
  • At least one reactive table.
  • A tab/page which includes relevant meta information about the data along with a data citation and link to the data source.
  • Relevant text for your users to navigate your dashboard and extract knowledge from it.

Requirements of the data scientist’s statement:

  • Addresses the purpose of the dashboard, including your motivations for focusing on the selected data and the intended audience.
  • Discusses how you hope users will engage with the dashboard.
  • Articulates why certain design choices, especially with respect to the interactivity, were made.
  • Presents your desired take-away messages.

Other considerations:

  • Along with the dashboard and data scientist’s statement, you will be submitting group member evaluations once the project is complete.
  • To facilitate feedback (and for resume building!), we will be posting the dashboards to Posit’s app server https://www.shinyapps.io/.
    • Therefore, I recommend utilizing non-sensitive data for your dashboard.

Data

I encourage you to use a data source that interests you and your group members for your project. If you are looking for data sources, here are a few good places to look:

Tips for getting started

Once you have chosen a data source, the next step is to plan out your dashboard.

  • Explore the data to get a sense of the variables and relationships between variables that you find most interesting/important.
  • Make some static plots that you think convey key messages/findings from the data. Use these as a jumping off point for curating the reactive graphs/maps you will put on your dashboard.
  • Create some wrangled data tables; this can help you identify what data would be useful to display to a user in a tabular format. Think about how you intend for users to interact with a data table.
  • One suggestion for getting started: do the initial data exploration individually and then meet to discuss what each person learned. You may have each discovered different angles on the data to incorporate into the dashboard!
  • Then as we discussed in class, create an ugly, basic dashboard that has the main types of interactivity/reactivity that you want.
  • Slowly add customizations or more advanced reactivity.

Timeline

  • 3/2: Receive project groups released
  • 3/4: Receive project instructions and invite to your group’s GitHub repo.
    • Please use your assigned Math 241 GitHub repo for this project.
  • 3/18 (noon): Post a working draft of your dashboard to https://www.shinyapps.io/
    • Working draft must:
      • Make use of at least one real-world dataset.
      • Have at least one user input.
      • Have at least one reactive graph (or map) and at least one reactive table.
      • Have relevant text so that your peers can navigate around the dashboard independently.
    • Only one group member needs to post the group’s app to shinyapps.io.
  • 3/18 (noon): Post the link to the group’s dashboard to this spreadsheet.
  • 3/18 - 3/20: Peer feedback period
    • Each person will provide feedback on the dashboards of two groups.
    • More guidance on providing feedback will be given in class that week.
    • Peer feedback is due 3/20 at 10pm.
  • 4/3 4/5 10pm: Link for the final version of dashboard should be added to this spreadsheet and PDF of your data scientist’s statement should be submitted on Gradescope.
  • 4/5 4/7 10pm: Group member feedback form due.