Sparkler: Bringing Life to R Dashboards

The Question

Should dashboards only work…

or should they feel good too?

How We Usually Talk About Dashboards

  • Clean data
  • Build models
  • Optimize performance

But almost never:

  • Expressive
  • Atmosphere
  • “Fun”

The Origin Story

Creator: Tiger Tang

While building a Wheel of Fortune Shiny app:

  • Winners needed celebration
  • Confetti, sound, motion
  • Realization: R apps lack “delight tools”

That became sparkler.

What Is sparkler?

sparkler is an R package that:

  • Wraps lightweight JavaScript engines
  • Renders high-performance visual effects
  • Works in:
    • Shiny apps
    • R Markdown documents
    • Quarto documents / slides

Three Ways to Use sparkler

🎉 The Reward — Confetti

For: Form submission, Training completion, Success messages

🚀 The Celebration — Fireworks

For: Major KPIs, Product launches

⛈️ The Atmosphere — Weather

  • Snow = cooling markets
  • Rain = stormy quarters
  • Meteors = big ambitions

Sparkler Snow in Action

code used:

library(sparkler)

sparkler::weather( type = “snow”, density = 0.6, fullscreen = TRUE )

Sparkler Fireworks

Shiny app

Final Thoughts ✨

Dashboards don’t have to lifeless.

They can: - Explain - Engage - Surprise

With one line of R, you can turn information into an experience.

sparkler isn’t about decoration —
it’s about emotion, memory, and storytelling.

Make your data feel like an experice with sparkler

THANK YOU!!

Sources

  • https://tigertang.org/sparkler/
  • https://quarto.org/docs/output-formats/html-themes.html
  • https://quarto.org/docs/authoring/videos.html
  • https://quarto.org/docs/presentations/revealjs/