RedUX : Breaking the Excel Barrier : UX Patterns
Working in the enterprise world as a web developer and later a UX practitioner, I’ve had several epiphanies over the years with regard to my users reliance upon Microsoft Excel. Wait…”several epiphanies”… is that the correct phrasing? Not sure. Let me try to explain my confusion on this...
As a junior web developer ( many years ago ) I didn’t give much thought to a user request of “can we export that web page table to Excel?”. My only hesitation to that request was that it involved extra coding time. As a junior, I wasn’t putting much thought into “why” the user wanted this extra work. In fact, “Exporting to Excel” became requested so often, that it became a standard feature on any page that included tabular data. The user would search, sort, page, and filter… and then export to Excel. Hmmm… Yes, that is not an epiphany.
Later in my web development career, the “extra coding time” for exporting to Excel began to bug me a bit. I began to ask, “…why are we always exporting to Excel? That seems like wasted code.” Still not an epiphany. It was maybe the stirrings of an epiphany, but I had not had that moment of clarity…
Even after a few years of focusing on User Experience, I still could not point to one particular moment and say…”It was than that I had an epiphany!” My understanding formed over time. I knew that I didn’t like the extra coding to implement an export to Excel feature. As I began to form arguments against this wasted code, my understanding of the problem increased. There are several facets to “The Excel Barrier.”
Ryan Sleeper made a wonder post a while back with the title… “A Spreadsheet is Not a Data Visualization” ( Linked below. )
In this article Ryan shares a mock conversation he has with the average Excel user regarding data visualization. This condensed conversation has a few gems of understanding in it, that may have contributed to my epiphany moment. I’ll include this below…
Excel fan: “Thanks for this — looks great. Would it be possible to take your world-class data visualization and turn it into an unreadable wall of numbers?”
(Okay, the ‘world-class’ part is an exaggeration — no one has ever said that.)
Ryan (me): “But Excel fan, look how much easier it is to gain valuable business insights more accurately and efficiently when the numbers are visualized! Isn’t that really cool?”
Excel fan: “Steven, my stakeholders are more comfortable seeing the exact numbers.”
Ryan (me): “It’s Ryan, actually. Let me just show…”
Excel fan: “Brian, please provide a text table of this information. Also, if there’s room along the bottom, please add at least one pie chart.”
That conversation is epiphany gold. “unreadable wall of numbers”, “more comfortable seeing the exact numbers”, “pie chart”. All of these things contribute to “The Excel Barrier”.
You see, in the enterprise world, folks are comfortable with Excel. They are okay with sorting-filtering-paging-scrolling-freezing-hiding through that unreadable wall of numbers, so that they can get to that one cell of data, that has their answer. So maybe therein lies my epiphany. My understanding. My Ahah moment.
So how can we help break that barrier?
I started looking for other places in the average user’s life, where even though the unreadable wall of data exists, they only see that one cell of data. Places where that one cell of data is trusted by the user, and informs them comfortably.
My search ended at the dashboard of my car. Behind the displays on that dashboard lies the unreadable wall of data. And I don’t ever feel the need to see it. The car has that data, gobs of it in fact. Every managed system on the car produces data. Engine management, emissions controls, even the Tire Pressure Management System (TPMS) generates data about the state of the car. But what do I see on the dash about those systems?
Nothing. Nothing unless there is a problem.
Unless there is something deemed important enough for me to see, even though I might be driving. The manufacturer has performed triage on this data on my behalf. They have sorted-filtered-paged-hidden… all of that unreadable wall of data into just what needs to be on the dashboard.
So what’s on the dash? The engine management data is condensed into the check engine light (CEL), and tire data into the TPMS indicator. The really important data like vehicle speed, remaining fuel, current song playing…all have prominent and persistent displays on the dashboard. More triage in action.
So as a UX Practitioner, determined to rid my user’s of their affliction and addiction to the unreadable wall of data... ( I’m tired of typing that out… UWD )… how do I get them to embrace Dashboard Thinking with regard to their enterprise data?
I do have a strategy. It may not be great, or proven, but I’m trying.
To me, there are several things to accomplish.
Foremost, I need to understand their business process so that I can”triage” the data for them. I need to understand how they scroll-filter-sort-hide…. Then I’ll roll that data up into an indicator for them and put it prominently on their dashboard.
Secondly, I need them to trust the indicators we create. For that, I’ll provide them with the underlying data, but it won’t be at the same visual prominence as the indicator. It will be “lower” on the page hierarchy. My hope is that they will look at the indicator first, and until they trust it, will only briefly glance at the supporting data. After a while, they will begin to trust the indicator and not need to refer to the data. I’m attempting to wean them off the Excel mindset in the least uncomfortable way I can.
So this has become rather lengthy. I have a slide deck I use when I to talk to this idea, but I didn’t want to bring those in… I’m trying to break the PowerPoint barrier next…
