I'm working on a web-based reporting system that allows users to create ad-hoc charts. The user selects the data to be analyzed (e.g., sales dollars, sales volume, number of employees, etc.) in addition to one or two groupings (e.g., by store, by city, by day of week, by type of merchandise, etc.). A simplified version looks something like this:
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I want to offer two different types of date-related groupings without confusing the user. How do I differentiate the following options?
Exact date groupings like year, quarter, month, week, day (e.g., month results in approximately 40 groups { Jan 2010, Feb 2010, ... Mar 2013 } depending on the date range selected). This allows users to see change over time.
Time period or time interval groupings like quarter of the year, month of the year, week of the year, day of the week, hour of the day (e.g., month of the year results in exactly 12 groups { January, February, ... December } with one or more Januarys grouped together). This allows users to see seasonal and other such trends.
I'm not sure what to call these two types of groupings. Are there established names I can use to explain these categories in place of "exact date" vs. "period"? I'm not sure how to present the idea of "pick 1 or 2 groupings" while still allowing users to recognize that month and month of the year are quite different.
The best I have come up with so far is something akin to a <select>
with <optgroup>
, but I'm sure there's a better way to present this.