
Design Better Data Tables - sebg
https://medium.com/mission-log/design-better-data-tables-430a30a00d8c#.tgvj2xsdq
======
rocqua
I disagree strongly with only mentioning the units in the first row.

If all units in a column are the same, mention that unit in the column header.
Otherwise, you need to mention it everywhere. Only putting units in the first
row suggests that the first row is different. It is basically lying in all the
other rows, presuming the reader catches the error and understands what is
meant.

I also think disagree slightly on color. Restricted use of color makes sense
For example red for negative values, or green for highlighted values that you
want to stand out.

Heck, if you have very geometric 2-D data, perhaps there is even a point to be
made to color the background according to the value so you can 'see' the
structure. This is pretty niche though.

~~~
IanCal
> I also think disagree slightly on color. Restricted use of color makes sense
> For example red for negative values, or green for highlighted values that
> you want to stand out.

I would argue that while you can use colour to _help_ your documents should be

* Perfectly readable when monochromatic

* Fully understandable without the colour

I would be concerned if you _need_ to add colour for your data to be
understood, and if you add it then it should be done with the understanding
that not all of your readers will be able to see the same differences as you
can (and you might be causing issues by altering things like contrast).

My only other main comment on this is similar, I want the communicated
information to not rely on anything visual in tables. Bolding some results to
indicate that they're significant is fine, if that information is available in
another way, as I hate converting a format and losing information.

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flukus
Some before/after shots would have been nice to get the point across.

The biggest abuse of tables I see (and have often been the implementor of) is
showing too much information for too many workflows that are slightly related.
I'm sure most of us here have seen what happens when we add "just one more
column" over and over again until is becomes that giant abomination with
dynamic sorting (some even do it client side) and a million filters that force
people to click 20 times just to do their job.

I think it causes a lot of maintenance issues as well, it's much easy to work
with many smaller and more task focused displays than it is to work with the
big "do everything" ones.

~~~
qqg3
This works really well to illustrate most of these points:
[http://i.imgur.com/ZY8dKpA.gif](http://i.imgur.com/ZY8dKpA.gif)

~~~
kk_cz
non-gif version: [https://speakerdeck.com/cherdarchuk/clear-off-the-
table](https://speakerdeck.com/cherdarchuk/clear-off-the-table)

And the rest of these:
[https://speakerdeck.com/cherdarchuk](https://speakerdeck.com/cherdarchuk)
(Pie Chart is my personal favorite :))

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PeterisP
The article states "One unsubstantiated opinion I have about rules is that
zebra striping is bad. Really, really bad. Take it or leave it." \- can
someone elaborate?

For me, when reading something with data tables, a common use case is to look
up a particular value in the table, and in the case of large tables (such as
the baseball statistics example given right above that quote, [https://cdn-
images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*71B5i6rZMMsryN0pD...](https://cdn-
images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*71B5i6rZMMsryN0pDwuXzw.png)) it's very hard to
reliably do so, and zebra striping or some other solution is necessary to
ensure that you're reading the right value for _this_ team, not the one above
or below that.

I would consider a guideline that makes tables more beautiful but less
readable (as measured by purely functional metrics such as speed and mistake
rate when reading them) as deeply flawed, putting the cart before the horse,
so to speak.

~~~
snarf21
Yeah, I have no idea why the strong stance. It seems to be so strongly rooted
in a minimalist perspective. If you want to not have zebra striping on by
default, I may be okay with that if you have it on during hover. In this
paradigm I also want it both directions like a giant +.

Another thing not discussed is the problem with big tables. If you have to
scroll at all, you lose the headers and "label" in column A. I like it when
things scroll only the "data" part but leave these fixed and always visible.
It would also be interesting to see a replication of the header as a footer
and an additional column Z that duplicated column. This helps you not have to
move your eyes back and forth as you look at the data and scroll around.

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btschaegg
Something that strikes me here: Coming from a european standpoint, using
commas as a delimiter for 3-digit groups seems like a very silly decision. In
the german speaking regions, the apostrophe is generally used for this - which
reduces the probability that someone could mistake it for a decimal mark.

On the other hand, the Germans seem to use commas as decimal marks, which is
even sillier. Both of those habits combined can cause much confusion if you're
not sure where the data comes from...

~~~
pavlov
And this is why CSV is one of the most broken file formats of all time.

"Comma-separated values" for spreadsheets doesn't work when comma is the
decimal separator. Localized versions of Excel decided to store numbers in the
local format, and just used some other delimiter for their version of "CSV"
(NCSV?). So what happens is that you open an American .csv file in a local
Excel, and you get an unexplained mess. The same happens going the other way.

~~~
kriro
You can select the separator when opening the file in LibreOffice Calc (don't
have Excel on this machine but I know it's possible as well). Setting it to
";" fixes this for all European data sets I have worked with that use ","
where "." would be used in the U.S. You can also specify the separator in
pretty much every other tool that imports CSV (for example in R).

~~~
rb808
Pipe | is even better.

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nickpeterson
Reminds me of Stephen Few's classic book, "Show Me the Numbers". Excellent
book if you have to report information to others that must be quickly
understood.

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siddboots
Interesting point about right-aligning numeric data. I've been making data
tables for a living for a decade, and never actually considered the reasoning
behind it.

~~~
beart
That seems very odd to me. I would expect most people should have learned the
impact of this from the first time learning addition. I guess this is a good
example of why you can never assume to know how someone else thinks about
information.

    
    
      |  5
      |+ 10
      |----
      |  15
    
      |   5
      |+ 10
      |----
      |  15

