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I am making a table that has three columns. The user can only choose either the second column or the third column to enter value. How would you design the table?

This is my current design, but I am not sure if this makes sense. Will people understand naturally that they can only enter either of them when they see the other column got disabled?

enter image description here

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  • Hello, would it possible for you to explain with your use case or even with just an example (like column 1: Type | column 2: Chips | column 3: Fruits – but user can chose healthy or not-healthy only, not both~ LOL)? so that we can relate it better and suggest the right methods. That will also let us know if even table is the right approach here.
    – Kish
    Commented Oct 24 at 10:39

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Distinguish the section in the table and provide some instruction.

Right now your design doesn't distinguish the 2 columns that require a selection.

There's several ways to approach this, but here's a quick sketch the gives the dependent columns a grouping, and a section header is one way of providing a unifying header and/or instruction.

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This way first time (or infrequent) users have some help available to them.

Another alternative: feature intro

You can also have a first time user get a popover introducing the feature if it's necessary to complete the task:

popover with instruction text

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