A Declarative Specification for Authoring Metrics Dashboards

Will Epperson, Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Allison Whilden, Fan Du, Justin Talbot

Abstract

Despite their ubiquity, authoring dashboards for metrics reporting in modern data analysis tools remains a manual, time-consuming process. Rather than focusing on interesting combinations of their data, users have to spend time creating each chart in a dashboard one by one. This makes dashboard creation slow and tedious. We conducted a review of production metrics dashboards and found that many dashboards contain a common structure: breaking down one or more metrics by different dimensions. In response, we developed a high-level specification for describing dashboards as sections of metrics repeated across the same dimensions and a graphical interface, Quick Dashboard, for authoring dashboards based on this specification. We present several usage examples that demonstrate the flexibility of this specification to create various kinds of dashboards and support a data-first approach to dashboard authoring.

Citation

A Declarative Specification for Authoring Metrics Dashboards
Will Epperson, Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Allison Whilden, Fan Du, Justin Talbot
Quick dashboarding presents a novel specification for dashboard authoring, comprised of sections of metrics combined with dimensions.
VDS at VIS 23: Visual Data Science Symposium (VDS). Melbourne, Australia, 2023.
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