How do i present a table with 4 "dimensions"

Question

What would be a good design for the user to interact with a dataset that has 4 "dimensions", and one of them is editable. It's presented on web, so i have all kind of user interaction in the possibility space.

A made up example, in a table:

• I can put "Type of animal" as columns (dimension 1)
• I can put "Part of animal" as rows (dimension 2)
• I can put the color of the animals body part in the actual cell (dimension 3) - a single value will be shown at a time here
• When i want to add a 4th dimension in here, i get into trouble. Say for example "continent"

Possible solution 1

Replicate the entire table one after another with "continent" as a heading. Takes much space, and all will probably not all be visible at the same time. Tabs instead?

Possible solution 2

Cram all the continents into each cell as a label, followed by the color. The table will be larger but still smaller than previous example. Will be very visually busy.

Anyone with experience solving, or has seen this solved in an elegant way?

Answer 1

Interaction greatly reduces the complexity of representing a table with multiple entries. It is as simple as setting interactive parent categories and filtering the table content.

A clear and much more complex example is the Population Distribution by Race/Ethnicity table.

In this case there are:

• Three modes of representation:

  • Table
  • Map
  • Graph

• A drop-down menu for each time period

• Three filters:

  • Data view
  • Distributions
  • Locations

• A plus: Tools Panel