Recently I was developing a report that was to be used as a sensitivity analysis and as such had a fair few variables that were linked to a formula. I was able to put the variables onto the sidebar but this then became quite complicated and not user friendly.
I haven't seen a way of doing this but I thought it would be quite useful if you could add the variable inputs to a view or somewhere else on screen so that you can position them as and how you like. It may well be that you could have an input device within a view that is linked to a variable perhaps.