1

Assumption: if there is a grid with 20 columns (I mean a lot of columns), and users can add/edit/remove rows and columns in bulk. Now we want to display the detailed changes of this grid (which means every change in a field needs to be displayed), so the question is too many info need to display, how to display it in a better way?　

Currently we have two plans.

Plan A: like Jira history, however, you can get how hard to read when display every field change.
enter image description here

Plan B: use grid to display grid changes, yellow means updates. But I am not sure it is clear to users or not.
enter image description here

Before I asked this question, I searched similar questions, unfortunately it doesn't have good answer yet. Could you help to figure out better solutions?

|improve this question
  • 1
    Hi and welcome! To get a useful answer, please share what solutions you have tried or thought about so far, and why that did not work. ux.stackexchange.com/faq#what-makes-a-good-question – JOG Nov 19 '12 at 10:06
  • 1
    Hi, if you have a screenshot of what you're currenty working with that would help us out here, as it's hard to visualise this issue without it. Just upload to imgur or wherever and provide the link to it and we'll bring the image inline to your post for you to help you get some answers. – JonW♦ Nov 19 '12 at 10:17
  • why is there nobody answer it? My question is not clear? -_- – syd1202 Nov 22 '12 at 2:24
  • Why are you using a grid? From the sample data, it looks like a software development schedule (or something similar), with phases for development and testing etc. You basically have lots of meta-data, and this needs to be tracked over time. Am I right? Or what is the use-case here? – CJF Nov 22 '12 at 6:45
  • Yes. It is for project management. Actually I don't think it is an common case yet, but sometimes users want to review detailed changes. So I think the basic question is when there are lots of meta-data, how could they be displayed? – syd1202 Nov 22 '12 at 7:03
1

I think that showing the changes visually will dramatically improve UX in your case, i.e. you may display a history which will allow you to see the result of applying a bulk change (adding or removing of the certain columns or rows, etc). It may look like the wireframe below:

enter image description here

You may implement such behaviour for changes, by highlighting changed cells and allow users to see the previous value by, for example, hovering it.

|improve this answer
  • Thanks for your answer, I was going to give it up. :) Do you mean just display changes in original grid? Like on Monday, Row 5 added, then the 5 rows should be highlighted, then like hover it will display changes. One more question is how to display those remove columns or rows? Click and then grid will get those removed ones back? I think there are lots of details need to be discussed. – syd1202 Nov 28 '12 at 5:54
  • @syd1202 You may use original grid or take user to another screen, it depends on density of information on main screen, for example, I think that history screen may show table with diffs, clickable history itself and maybe some additional information, which may be needed. The wireframe below is showing a removed column, so you just put it into the table and highlight in red. And remove it if user walks up the history and keep it if he or she walks down. – alexeypegov Nov 28 '12 at 8:00
  • @syd1202 the idea behind the playable history that user will be able to reconstruct the changes in reverse order and so that exactly was changed and how at every step. The disadvantage of this is that changes will be shown step by step, but if you have a big table and a lot of changes I think it's more convenient anyway. – alexeypegov Nov 28 '12 at 8:12
  • Thanks! I agree with you that it is more convenient to display lots of changes for a big table. However, from development aspect, I am afraid the complexity and cost is high, especially on displaying removed ones. But indeed,it is a creative idea for me. – syd1202 Nov 29 '12 at 3:44

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.