The Belmaker lab fieldwork involves underwater surveys where we document the observed marine species. Historically, Microsoft’s Access was used for data input. But as the number of surveyors increased, a new user-friendly platform was needed to avoid bottlenecks. In this talk, I share my experience of developing such a platform for the lab using tidyverse packages. This experience demonstrates the concept of Minimum Viable Products as the use of Google Sheets evolved from manually creating the sheets to a single line of code. We encourage other researchers to expand their use of R to create a tailor made data processing workflow - from the data input stage.
Hezi is currently finishing his PhD in marine ecology at Tel Aviv University, where he also taught R to other graduate students. His research focuses on the impacts of invasive species on the Mediterranean Sea. He is in a constant pursuit of honing his data science skills, and always on a lookout for challenging obstacles that can be overcome with creative thinking.
