Building Dashboards

Dashboards are a practical way to share your data analysis—whether you’re presenting to stakeholders, supporting clients, or publishing online. They provide a way to publish your work for a broader audience, add interactivity, and even enable self-serve tools where users can bring their own data.

🎉 Good News: With modern large language models (LLMs), you can now build dashboards without needing to know HTML, frontend tools, or the intricacies of dashboard libraries. You just need to describe what you want, test the result, and provide clear instructions to refine it. Tools like Gradio, Streamlit, and Plotly Dash help generate functional user interfaces quickly and with minimal code.

📚 What is Covered in This Section?

This section walks through how to create dashboards using prompting and lightweight tools:

🎯 Dashboard Use Cases

Learn how dashboards are used to:

  • 📊 Publish insights for stakeholders

  • 📖 Support interactive storytelling with data

  • 🛠️ Build self-serve analysis tools where users bring their own data

🧰 Dashboard Tool Options

Overview of commonly used tools:

  • Gradio – Easy Python library for data demos and interactive analysis
  • Gradio Lite – Static version that runs in-browser with no server needed
  • HTML + JavaScript – For full customization and embedding
  • Streamlit – Fast way to build Python-based dashboards
  • Plotly Dash – Supports advanced, interactive visualizations

💻 Using Gradio and Gradio Lite

Focus on practical dashboard creation using:

  • Gradio for Jupyter/Colab-based interfaces
  • Gradio Lite for standalone HTML dashboards

You’ll learn how to:

  • ✨ Scaffold user interfaces with prompts

  • 🎛️ Add dropdowns, filters, and interactive controls

  • 📈 Integrate charts and visualizations

  • 🌐 Export dashboards for the web or your Quarto site

💡 Tip: The key to building dashboards with LLMs is being specific—see What to Prompt for tips on writing clear, detailed prompts.