Hi Portland!

• I’m Jasmine Dumas
  • Data Scientist and useR living in Connecticut
  • Work at Simple Finance based in PDX
  • Author of ttbbeer and shinyLP
• Slides and Materials available on GitHub:
  • jasdumas/talks/PDX-R-user-group

I began buildng shiny apps in 2014

• Identification of cancer bio-markers based on gene expression data
  • Development of a pipeline that would automate the analysis of gene expression datasets from the Gene Expression Omnibus
• Focused on creating a user friendly tool
  • Understand how non-R users would utilize the application, interpret visualizations, and derive statistical inference

Why should you care about this?

• Shiny is a popular tool and is gaining popularity
• Advanced features have been added to shiny which have led to more robust apps
• With the creation of robust and advanced apps we run the risk of not including essential user-centric design features
• Those features help direct users how to use the app as intended
  • Especially if the apps are developed for non-technical users

What could go wrong when we don’t include good user experience features?

The shiny web framework package makes it easier to create R-powered web apps

• Transforms static R code into interactive reports and dashboards
• No need to learn web development languages
  • CSS, HTML, JavaScript, JQuery
• free or low cost hosting options for shinyapps.io & shiny server
• Shiny is extendable and modular

Additional shiny add-on packages that increase usability

• shinyjs: lets you perform common useful JavaScript operations in Shiny apps that will greatly improve your apps without having to know any JavaScript.
• shinydashboard: provides a theme on top of Shiny, making it easy to create attractive dashboards.
  
• shinythemes: easily alter the overall appearance of your Shiny application.
• shinyBS: Adds additional Twitter Bootstrap components to Shiny.
  • Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.

New Zealand Tourism website

Tweet Analyzer

Twin Cities Bus

Hartford Connecticut Crime

Letsrun.com Shoe Database

Wikimedia Search Metrics Dashboard

A quote from an influential R Programmer…

There are ways to do that with landing home pages!

• Adapt examples from existing websites & applications and provide informative landing pages which explain the web app’s usage in a clear and concise manner
• These are vital pieces to ensure that users are set up for success
• User success can be defined if they:
  • Can use the application as intended, contact developers for assistance, see examples, or sign up for a service or account

Example landing home page

I developed an R package that helps make landing home pages called shinyLP

• Adds even more Bootstrap components to make landing home pages for Shiny
• On CRAN and GitHub

jumbotron <- function(header , content, button = TRUE,  ...){

  button_label = c(...)

  if (button){
    HTML(paste0("<div class='jumbotron'>
                <h1> ", header, "</h1>
                <p>", content ,"</p>",
                "<p><a class='btn btn-primary btn-lg' button id='tabBut'>", button_label, "</a></p>
                </div>") )

  } else {
    HTML(paste0("<div class='jumbotron'>
                <h1> ", header, "</h1>
                <p>", content ,"</p>",
                "</div>") )
  }

}

Orange you glad I’m showing examples of shinyLP…

This shinyLP example is a-peeling…

Naval oranges prevent scurvy…