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:

1. bare-minimum edits for tables (alignment, decluttering, etc.);
2. a few different ideas for visualizing percent changes (checkboxes, slopes, deviation bars, icons); and
3. 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.