A case for interactivity in slides presentations (using R Markdown and htmlwidgets)

Introduction

In a digital age where dashboards and real-time data exploration have become the norm, it is remarkable that most of public presentations still rely on the PowerPoint format, featuring static charts and visualizations
While these ‘traditional’ slides have served us well for years, it’s time to embrace presentations that not only inform but actively engage audiences
Interactive presentations stand out when the information you want to convey benefits from exploration and engagement
This means you can ask questions, analyze trends, and make decisions on the fly
That is especially useful in situations where one expects active engagement of with the audience, like Q&A sessions

With hover interactions, the users can access additional information precisely when they need it,
like in this case of summary statistics (boxplot displaying quartiles):

Overlapping labels and excessive text can overwhelm viewers
Hover-based information display lets users focus on the data they are interested in without distraction.

With interactive elements, the user can tailor the presentation to your audience’s needs
The reduction in cognitive load can lead to better comprehension and decision-making
Try clicking and dragging the cursor across to zoom in on a group of choice

For data that changes over time, interactive presentations can allow users to explore trends, anomalies, and correlations.
Try changing the displayed time period

When you want to compare different scenarios, products, or regions, interactive presentations allow users to switch between options quickly
Try clicking on the legend on the bottom of the chart to add and remove displayed elements

The output file used for these interactive slides is a single .html document
The .html file can be sent by email, downloaded from a repository (or carried on a flash drive). All the data and visuals are already locally in the code, without need to be online to present it
HTML presentations work seamlessly across different platforms and devices, whether it’s a computer, tablet, or smartphone

Beyond various types of charts and graphs, interactive capabilities include to maps, data tables (see the next slides), calendars, network graphs

One interactive visualisations can replace multiple static images.

An interactive table enables the user to sort and filter data directly within the table, by a keyword, either in the whole table or on the level of columns.
Try typing “ITY” into the “Obj. Number” column, or “Ongoing” into the “Overall Progress” column

This interactive elements of this presentation are written in R language, a versatile programming language used for analyzing data, creating charts and graphs, making data-driven decisions (and much more ..)
To be more precise, the interactive elements are brought to live using series of R packages called htmlwidgets, powerful technology in R that bridges the gap between R and JavaScript
The presentation is written in R Markdown interface, a user-friendly notebook format that combines plain text with code, allowing non-programmers and data professionals alike to create dynamic reports
R Markdown documents can be built into many different formats: PDF, Word (both static), notebooks, whole books or websites

To find out more about R language, R Markdown, htmlwidgets packaages, I include some links on the last slide
For easier reading, clicking here you can view a webpage version of this presentation (no slides) and by clicking here you can view the version with the R code chunks included
The whole source code and underlying data files for this presentation are available at the Github repository of the same name

P.S. If you are intrigued and would like me to try to create a presentation for you, send me your data (CSV, XLS, JSON) to “zdeno@zdebla.me”