Got a data app idea? Apply to get it prototyped by the JHU DSL!

18 Jan 2017 By Jeff Leek

Last fall we ran the first iteration of a class at the Johns Hopkins Data Science Lab where we teach students to build data web-apps using Shiny, R, GoogleSheets and a number of other technologies. Our goals were to teach students to build data products, to reduce friction for students who want to build things with data, and to help people solve important data problems with web and SMS apps.

We are going to be running a second iteration of our program from March-June this year. We are looking for awesome projects for students to build that solve real world problems. We are particularly interested in projects that could have a positive impact on health but are open to any cool idea. We generally build apps that are useful for:

• Data donation - if you have a group of people you would like to donate data to your project.
• Data collection - if you would like to build an app for collecting data from people.
• Data visualziation - if you have a data set and would like to have a web app for interacting with the data
• Data interaction - if you have a statistical or machine learning model and you would like a web interface for it.

But we are interested in any consumer-facing data product that you might be interested in having built. We want you to submit your wildest, most interesting ideas and we’ll see if we can get them built for you.

We are hoping to solicit a large number of projects and then build as many as possible. The best part is that we will build the prototype for you for free! If you have an idea of something you’d like built please submit it to this Google form.

Students in the class will select projects they are interested in during early March. We will let you know if your idea was selected for the program by mid-March. If you aren’t selected you will have the opportunity to roll your submission over to our next round of prototyping.

I’ll be writing a separate post targeted at students, but if you are interested in being a data app prototyper, sign up here.