How are you visualizing percent changes?
I recently saw a boring, black and white table as I was scrolling through LinkedIn.
The topic caught my attention—it was about Hispanic adults living with HIV—but the poorly-formatted table wasn’t making the patterns easy to understand.
I had a 30-minute window before I needed to pick up my kids from school, so I dove in!
In this 7-minute summary, you’ll learn:
- bare-minimum edits for tables (alignment, decluttering, etc.);
- a few different ideas for visualizing percent changes (checkboxes, slopes, deviation bars, icons); and
- the winning design.
What’s Inside
- 0:00 Intro
- 0:18 The original table
- 1:06 Remaking the table with the same formatting
- 1:23 Gray horizontal lines
- 1:31 Left-aligned text
- 1:48 Trend lines
- 2:27 Percent changes with deviation bars
- 2:53 How-to tips in Excel (sparklines, data bars, IF statements)
- 3:28 Checkboxes to show increases or decreases
- 3:52 Adding state icons with the StateFace font
- 4:27 Adding arrow icons
- 4:54 Narrowing-down the best ideas
- 5:25 Re-sizing the columns
- 5:40 Not so Debbie-Downery
Download the Spreadsheet
It’s here.
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