What?
Dashboards are a great way of accessing a large number of statistics from many different areas. They're visually pleasing, can be interactive and useful as a quick one-stop-shop for information. We are trailing a concept on BetaWorks called 'ABS Statistical Snapshot' based on the Key Economic Indicators page on the ABS Website.
Why?
Data Visualisation is an innovative means of communicating information simply. This Dashboard is designed so users are able to access quick charts and figures of particular interest rather than jump through multiple publications to access the data they are interested in.
When?
This is only a conceptual idea, let us know your thoughts on the prototype.
#1: Deidre
I love this kind of data presentation, I thought the section on demography was particularly excellent e.g. with the animated age structure pyramid and the map that you can zoom in and out of. We have some similar dashboard type reporting through Business Intelligence and one of the functions I like on there is that you can click on a particular point to bring up a data table or drill down for further information (using drop down boxes to select fields of interest). For example, on a chart of population within each State/Territory, it would be helpful to be able to click on a State and bring up another interface where you could get the breakdown by age, sex, household income, ethnicity etc. etc. and then have a way of exporting the resulting data table to e.g. Excel. This is really useful to anyone trying to do analysis, rather than just looking for that once-off figure. Excellent idea though and I hope we see more of it in the future.
#2: Jarryd
Hi Mike, Thank you for your response. Adding something like an information pop up window to explain each indicator is a really good idea and something I will include in any further development work on this. Thanks for the input!
#3: Mike
Very cool!
Do you think it would be worthwhile giving a short description of each indicator, especially for those that might not be intuitive or common knowledge (e.g. PPI)?