Data explorers go a step beyond the data consumer. Although still casual self-service users, they differ by having the time and expertise to augment their own dashboards. They know BI tools well enough to make their own visualizations from connected data. They don’t need as much hand holding on the design side, but they still depend on data or IT teams to deliver relevant, quality data.

- Joe Hilleary in Supporting Self-Service Analytics with a Unified Platform

March 12, 2021 (Blog)

Data explorers, on the other hand, are casual users who occasionally want to modify reports or dashboards to create a new view of existing data. Data explorers represent about 30% of all data users.” “Of the four personas, data explorers are the hardest to support. Most of the time (80%), data explorers consume reports and dashboards just like data consumers, but occasionally (20% of the time) they want to act like power users and generate ad hoc queries and create reports from scratch. Unfortunately, most data explorers don’t have power user skills and can’t remember how to use the self-service features of a BI tool.

- Wayne Eckerson in How to Succeed with Self-Service Analytics: Balancing Empowerment and Governance

March 23, 2020 (E-book)