Numbers alignment in a table and in a topdown label placement

Question

Hello UX Stackexchange,

Recently I'm facing an issue in terms of forms design.

My developer has insisted that numbers should be aligned right. But I think that since the input for numbers are far apart from the Label, this spells bad experience for the user and causes alignment issues for me.

The placement of our forms are using Top-Down placement so it looks messy when the numbers are aligned right.

I agree that in tables, numbers are aligned right since tables are usually for comparison and aligning right makes it easier to compare.

Anyone else has this similar issue and how do you handle them?

Answer 1

Left align everything. Your eyeball should not ping-pong back and forth. If you had a stop watch, you can time how much faster it is to scan all the text if your eyeball only has to move in one smooth direction (down). Left align, IMO, unless you want your visitors to take twice as long to read, interpret and complete the form.

In addition to your question, I would offer a design change and NOT bold the labels. The important text is the INPUT. If the LABELS are bold, they will appear more prevalent. Bold LABELS hinder the ease of reading all of your INPUTS. The LABELS should not be obnoxiously in the way.

Answer 2

I agree with you. Numbers should aligned right (or, better, on the decimal) in tables when they're being compared with each other. That isn't necessary when entering numbers into a field in a form. (Unless you're comparing the numerical entries for some reason.) Left aligning them, like the text-entry fields, would probably look better overall.