Making Tables Great Again
The animation on the left illustrates perfectly this project. As a project management software, we deal with lots of data: dates, numbers, amounts, resources, and much more.
Tables make large amounts of data more exploitable, giving users the ability to scan pieces of information and compare elements. It’s all about lines and columns, but between a bad and a good table, there is sometimes a huge gap…
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Analyse the existing
What are we working with? Pick up all bad practices and write down guidelines you would like to follow, identify objectives to achieve so you can come back to them later.
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Do your research.
Get inspired by others that have been working on the same topic. Have a look at competitors and market leaders. How are they tackling the subject? What ideas to keep, and how can you do even better?
Illustration from Material.io
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Find, fail, repeat
Try out different combinations. Don’t overthink or create only guideline accurate and pixel perfect designs. Add some color, some contrast… Go all the way, and come back! Duplicate frames and keep everything, as anything can turn out to be the starting point of the solution you are after…
Until it all falls down perfectly…
Each style has it’s own guidelines & specifications
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Before
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After
Design System
In the end, each element is created as a component and combined with Figma’s variants. Thanks to a lot of patience and the helping hands of my assistant Étienne Baritaud Figueroa.
Complex, not complicated