Saturday, July 11, 2015

usability - How to align prices in columns when both 2 digit and 4 digit variations of a price exist?


I am trying to display data similar to coinmarketcap with prices for coins, some above 1$ in which case they are rounded to 2 zeroes, some below 1$ in which case they have 4 digits following the decimal. I saw a bunch of posts here where people have suggested to use right alignment for numeric applications/prices



Approach 1 Decimal aligned


 1. $13,700.05
2. $0.0048

Approach 2 Right aligned


 1. $13700.05
2. $0.0048

Which of these approaches do you suggest? Thank you for your time



Answer




It seems to me that your first approach (decimal aligned) is pretty obviously much more readable. The amounts are much easier to perceive because of the same position of digits of the same significance and so it is much easier to quickly spot lager differences of the numbers by just scanning the table. Only if none of this is relevant in your design, but you are e.g. extremely constrained with space only then I would probably consider the second option (the right aligned one).


No comments:

Post a Comment

technique - How credible is wikipedia?

I understand that this question relates more to wikipedia than it does writing but... If I was going to use wikipedia for a source for a res...