Interactive data visualization on online platforms using web applications. A case study of Bank of Uganda financial statistics

Abstract

Data visualization is the presentation of data in a pictorial or graphical format. It enables decision makers to see analytics presented visually, so they can grasp difficult concepts or identify new patterns. With interactive visualization, you can take the concept a step further by using technology to drill down into charts and graphs for more detail, interactively changing what data you see and how it’s processed. The research was carried out to establish how interactive visualization of data on online platforms can be improved using interactive web applications especially in such times when the entire world has resorted to working online in almost all institutions for example health, finance and banking, marketing and sales, among others. Most statisticians have been almost left with no choice only to communicate their statistical findings via emails, company websites, and government institutions websites extra. The data which was used in this study to program the interactive web application, is the Bank of Uganda financial statistics and particular mobile money statistics, government securities (Treasury bill and bond) and value and Volumes-and-Values-RTGS (Uganda shilling, us dollar, Kenyan shilling, Tanzania shilling, pound sterling, among others) and financial inclusion indicators. R software which is the statistical programming language and open source was used to build a code that inputs data by importing from excel and other spreadsheets, process it using R packages such as highcharter, shiny, tidyverse, plotly, rio, shinydashboard, extra and then outputs a ready to use interactive data dashboard on almost all online platforms. This made it easy for any consumer of such information to access it via the internet in a pictorial and interactive graphical format that can be easily be comprehended by almost all categories of people.