Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Once you have answers to these questions, you should be able to determine what type of
dashboard will be most effective. In the next section, we'll consider five different types of
dashboards.
Types of Dashboards
There are five different types of dashboards that you can create: explanatory, exploratory, ex-
planatory/exploratory, storytelling, and infographics-style dashboards. Let's take a look at
each:
Explanatory dashboards
The primary objective is to point out a specific fact (or facts) about a certain subject to
educate readers. Key features include annotations and informative text. Explanatory
dashboards are often
static
, with very few, if any, interactive elements, such as the one in
Exploratory dashboards
The primary objective is to allow users to delve into a subject ad hoc and find answers
about a whole host of potential questions. Exploratory dashboards are often interactive,
featuring various types of controls that allow the user to drill-down to specific subsets of
the data, like the example in
Figure 12-5
.
Explanatory/exploratory dashboards
Dashboards that explain central facts while also allowing for ancillary analyses can be
very powerful. As such, they often include both annotations and interactive controls,
such as the one about avalanches in the United States, shown in
Figure 12-6
.
