ASSIGNMENT 3
BRIEFING
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THE TASK
The City of Melbourne (your client) has asked you to
produce an interactive interface to either:
– Help people discover interesting and practical
information about Melbourne,
or
– Help a government agency identify interesting
patterns in the data or make decisions for specific
tasks.
The boundaries of the City of Melbourne –
your interface should largely focus
within these boundaries (can include
neighbouring areas when relevant)
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THE TASK
Your interface is targeted to one of the
following user groups:
1. Tourists that would like to/are visiting
Melbourne
2. Local citizens that commute to the
CBD
3. State Government department that is
interested in the performance of any of
Public Transport, Metro Tunnel, vehicle
volume, pedestrian counts, …
(not limited to transport)
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HOW TO COMPLETE THE TASK
• Work in a group of 4
• Prepare an interface
• It can either be:
– An R Shiny interface that incorporates
one or more Tableau visualisations
– A Tableau interface that incorporates
one or more R Shiny visualisations
• Think about:
– When and where will the
interface be used?
– What places are most popular?
– What patterns can be found?
How can you help the user to
discover patterns?
– Are there any anomalies or
specifics?
– What platform should be used
(computer, mobile, kiosk, …)?
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DELIVERABLES – WHAT YOU NEED TO SUBMIT
A Interface and report (30%)
A.1 Interface implementation
• A single ZIP file containing your
interface and any required data
• Needs to include a README.txt file
explaining how to run the interface
A.2 Report
• Two sections
• Design summary (2 pages)
– Describe audience and purpose
– What aspects of the design you want to get
credit for
• Pattern or use case summary (2 pages)
– Interesting patterns or info that your target
audience can discover using your interface
– How your tool helped discover these
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DELIVERABLES – WHAT YOU NEED TO SUBMIT
B Video (15%)
• 10 minutes
• Pre-recorded pitch presentation to the City of Melbourne (your client)
• Provide background for, and demonstrate, your interface
• All team members must speak
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HOW TO SCORE WELL
What does a great submission look like?
– A very well-designed, revealing, logically
structured, interactive Tableau story
containing a Shiny viz (perhaps a map)
– An exploratory, highly interactive,
polished Shiny app containing
Tableau viz(zes)
– It incorporates a fresh and innovative yet
effective design, and demonstrates that
you have challenged yourselves
technically
– Must be designed firmly with the target
user group in mind
The usual criteria for assessment
– Report
– Submission and basic design
– Technical challenge
– Design innovation
Note: your interface should include
some technical challenges beyond
the lab sessions and Assignments 1
and 2.
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WORKING TOGETHER
• Your group members will have different backgrounds
– For example: uncomfortable with coding / may have a lot of experience with
mapping / may not be strong at aesthetic design / …
• Discuss your individual skills and strengths
– What are you each good at?
– What would you not like to work on?
• Stay in contact
– Agree on a weekly meeting time via Zoom (or other tool)
– Reply to your group members’ messages; do not “disappear”
• We will check that all team members have been contributing
– If there are issues in your team, do not leave it until the end
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RESOURCES
Tableau
» Lab 8 videos on integrating Shiny and Tableau
» Publish to Tableau Public
– Note: This makes your work publicly visible and searchable. Do not submit private
or copyrighted datasets to Tableau Public.
» Actions in Tableau
» Tableau Embedding API v3
– When embedding Tableau into Shiny, you can incorporate small pieces of JavaScript
code into your R Shiny code using the runjs function. For example, you can make
Tableau update a filter when a user clicks something on a Leaflet map in Shiny.
– Tableau Embedding API v3 Tutorial
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RESOURCES
R and Shiny
» Training materials listed in Weeks 4-7
» R and Shiny textbooks listed in Assignment 2
» R Graphics Cookbook
» ggplot2 cheat sheets | ggplot2 workshop | ggplot2-book
» ggiraph-book
» Learn Shiny
» Leaflet Tutorials
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RESOURCES
Web programming
Advanced students may wish to include web programming in their Shiny app.
» HTML for custom content: Using HTML in Shiny | HTML with W3Schools
» CSS for custom styling: Using CSS in Shiny | CSS with W3Schools
» JavaScript for custom interactivity: JavaScript with W3Schools | tutorial | guide
» Web programming cheat sheets:
– HTML: This cheat sheet includes a list of every HTML tag, in alphabetical order.
– CSS: There are many CSS properties, and it's easy to forget the specific name for one
particular visual modification you want to make. This cheat sheet lists all of them.
– JavaScript: This cheat sheet provides an overview of many basic aspects of JavaScript.
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RESOURCES
Visualisation tools
» Non-spatial visualisations
– Tableau’s many built-in visualisations (Lab 2) | R ggplot and ggiraph (Labs 4 to 6)
– 30 R Packages For Data Visualization That You May Not Know Of
– Research other available R packages
– Invent your own visualisation type! Draw a static visualisation using R graphics or
(for advanced coders) make an interactive graphic using d3.js and the r2d3 R package
» Geovisualisation
– Tableau maps (Lab 3) | R leaflet (Lab 7)
– Make your own custom basemaps using Mapbox Studio and add them to leaflet
using the mapboxapi R package
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RESOURCES
Data
» List of suggested datasets on Canvas
– Find the datasets at https://data.vic.gov.au or
https://data.melbourne.vic.gov.au
– Or download the geodatabase (.gdb) with all
the data – can view in Tableau or QGIS
Note some datasets are outdated! Take care.
– This is spatial data, but your interface does not
need to use the spatial component. However,
consider the needs of your user group
» https://unimelb.libguides.com/GIS
Thank you!