We run an analytics monitoring service. We have a chart control that we use to show data to users who want to explore their different analytics providers. Here's a rough mockup:
Here, the user is looking at the metrics associated with and available from one of their Twitter accounts. The dropdown contains all the accounts for all their services; below that are all the metrics for that stream.
I don't like that the unit of measurement is repeated at least three times here on this chart: once at the top-left on the chart label, once on the right-hand panel that tells you what you're mouseover-ing, and once on the bottom where you pick the streams.
One idea I had was to move the stream/metric selection to the top, since that would be a little more natural to have the title also be the place where you can change what you're looking at. However, if we do that, then the chart will get pushed down different amounts for services with different numbers of streams, which seems unwieldy.
Conversely, if we leave the stream/metric selection at the bottom, the title of what you're looking at would come after the thing it refers to, which also seems strange.
Is there a way to pull this off and eliminate the title label repetition, or is this a "something's gotta give" situation where we should consider giving up something else?