table talk
It was exciting to see how many people jumped at the opportunity to build and format tables last month. Fifty-seven community members shared their tabular creations for the September #SWDchallenge. We even caught the table bug at storytelling with data: adding tables to our growing chart guide, creating a table-related exercise, and building out a tabular makeover.
“I love that the exercise was on tables because tables are one of the two most common ways I see data organized in my professional life. I think they are a powerful way to organize data when done effectively because everyone knows how to read a table.” - Brett Lohmeyer, September 2020 #SWDchallenge
Brett makes a good point about tables being widely known. Recognize, though, that just because something is familiar doesn’t mean we can spend less effort creating it. Tables are tricky to process—they take time to make sense of, and often require us to hold multiple values in our heads. Simple formatting steps can go a long way in transforming a table from overwhelming to scannable. Let’s look at some common ways people formatted their tables last month.
Implement hierarchy.
Tables often contain a large amount of detail, and if you aren’t careful, they can quickly look like raw data files (not an ideal scenario). One way to prevent this is to chunk information together and implement a visual hierarchy. This could mean categorizing data, which reduces the time spent figuring out how similar columns relate to one another. Kuan-Pei leveraged the underlying hierarchy from her data in her interactive table design, making it so that an audience could choose whether they wanted to look at the big picture or at more granular detail. Rodrigo took this a step further by concatenating columns and creating a hierarchy within each row of data—a fantastic strategy for preventing a table from becoming too wide. Phil added lines, symbols, and boldface to clarify there were underlying equations in his financial table. There is no single way to add a visual hierarchy. The key is to think about your data’s underlying structure and add visual cues to convey it to someone unfamiliar.
Put it into words.
If you want to share an insight from your data table, consider how mentally taxing this is for someone else—mainly if there are multiple rows and columns. Save your audience time by verbalizing the takeaway. This works for any chart type but is more critical when there is excess data. Notice how Jared's title clarified that we should focus on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Without the title priming me, I may have focused on the top three movies or noticed a completely different story. Gordan posed a question in his title and used annotations to answer it—transforming this table from exploratory to explanatory. Shahrukh used multiple titles and animation to take us step-by-step through a rather large table about the FIFA World Cup. All of these examples highlight the power of words. Because tables house a lot of data, they often contain several underlying stories, so make it clear which one is most important.
Picture it!
Unsurprisingly, many of our community members found a way to create a graph last month, despite the table constraint. Once you understand the power of visuals, it’s hard to let go! Visual elements within a table can help get complex information across much faster. Even something as simple as adding icons for categories can go a long way. The icons in Andrei's La Liga table make it straightforward to identify a specific team. Or consider how added bars and lines could help share a shape or pattern that would otherwise be difficult to see. Pris did just that, using bars to visualize the varying distances between Japanese airports and theme parks. This was a common technique we saw throughout the challenge, with many adding a visual element on the table’s right-hand side. Bruno deviated from this convention by adding bars on the left, closest to his Q1 data. This is a good reminder that position matters; think about what you want your audience to compare, and how you can bring items physically together to better facilitate that comparison.
These past few months, we’ve asked you to revisit the basics with us during the monthly challenges (diagrams, pies, and tables). It turns out there are always things to learn and new techniques to try when it comes to visualizing your data—even if you are using a standard view.
For more table inspiration and themes, browse the submissions in the community. Or, if you are looking to move beyond the basics, there is still time to participate in this month’s xenographic challenge. We ask you to face a graph-related fear by building a weird or unfamiliar chart—anything goes!