What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Dashboards?

TLDR

Dashboards are a common data‑visualization use case, and their design and usage contexts differ markedly from exploratory tools. The paper investigates how dashboards are used in practice by analyzing examples and documentation, systematically reviewing the literature, constructing a design space, and identifying major dashboard types. The authors characterize dashboards by design goals, interaction levels, and surrounding practices, based on a systematic literature review and example analysis. The resulting framework and review highlight several promising research directions for improving dashboard design, implementation, and use.

Abstract

Dashboards are one of the most common use cases for data visualization, and their design and contexts of use are considerably different from exploratory visualization tools. In this paper, we look at the broad scope of how dashboards are used in practice through an analysis of dashboard examples and documentation about their use. We systematically review the literature surrounding dashboard use, construct a design space for dashboards, and identify major dashboard types. We characterize dashboards by their design goals, levels of interaction, and the practices around them. Our framework and literature review suggest a number of fruitful research directions to better support dashboard design, implementation, and use.