Principles of Good Interface and Screen Design 215 Reports

Step 3: Principles of Good Interface and Screen Design 215 Reports

Report Body — Provide clear column headings. — Show units of measurement. — Use the right fonts. — Clearly identify rows. — For a body that is too wide:

• Let users move or resize the columns. • Wrap information in a column of cells.

— Break up pages logically.

For headers: — Minimally include:

• Print date. • What or whom the report is for. • Title.

— Consider including: • Report or file parameters. • Print or retrieval time. • Logo and other organization identity items.

For footers: — Minimally include:

• Current Page Number. — Consider including: • Number of pages in report. • Print date (if not in the header). • Data source (file, database or table name). • Report format name. • URL or other location information. • Legal information.

— Repeat at the bottom of every page.

Body.

A report body usually contains rows of columnized data and column head- ings. Page and data breaks may also require inclusion of subheadings, subtotals, or summaries at each break. Design guidelines for a report body are as follows.

Column headings. Column headings must clearly describe the column’s contents.

Avoid abbreviations in column headings whenever possible. If an abbreviation is necessary, use a ToolTip to spell out an abbreviation. (ToolTips are described in Step 7.)

Units of measurement. Some types of data can be described by different units of

measurement, for example: inches or centimeters; miles, or kilometers? If there is any possibility of ambiguity, always include the unit of measurement in a column heading. Data interpretation errors will be prevented.

216 Part 2: The User Interface Design Process

Fonts. Alignment of numeric data is important for any report containing numbers. Data comparisons will be easier to perform, and errors easier to detect. In reports, numbers in columns should always be presented right-aligned using mono- spaced fonts. A monospaced type is fixed-width, each number possessing the same width. The standard PC monospaced typeface is Courier. Monaco is the standard on the Macintosh. Courier, however, is a very wide type. The numbers in some of the common software fonts are always presented as monospaced, even though the letters are not. Examples include Arial, Times New Roman, and Verdana. Always use proportional fonts (variable-width letters depending on character width) for textual information because monospaced text will consume about 30 percent more real estate on a screen.

Rows. Visually distinguish individual rows by displaying alternate rows in a light color. As described previously in Tables, Tullis (2003) found that alternate-row shading yielded the best performance (speed and accuracy of response) and was rated as the best alternative by study participants. If alternate-row spacing can- not be implemented, or if more than seven rows are presented, insert extra white space after every fifth row.

Wide body. If a report is too wide to be completely seen on a screen, or printed on a paper, it may be narrowed in a couple of ways. One solution is to allow users to move, shrink, or expand columns so all information, or at least the important information, can be seen simultaneously. While some columns may have to be fixed in size, many can be modified. Another solution is to wrap a wide cell’s content into two lines, as illustrated in Table 3.2.

Page breaks. For multipage reports, break pages at logical points in the presented information. Headers. Headers usually contain information about what is contained in the print- out. Minimally include the date the report is printed, or, for onscreen reports, the retrieval date. Also include the name of the intended recipient and the report title. Recipient name and title may be wrapped, if necessary, on more than one line. Optional information that may be included are report or file parameters (such as a date range), print or retrieval time, and organization identity graphics and logos.

Footers. Footers are strictly for reference, containing information about the printout itself. As such, they should not draw attention to themselves. A smaller non-bold, non-italic font is recommended. Minimally, a footer should contain a page num- ber. Optional information that may be included are print date (if not in header), the data source (file, database or table name), the report format name so that the same format can be found to update the report, URL or other location informa- tion, and legal information such as copyrights, and so on. Repeat the footer at the bottom of each page. If a footer is rarely printed, it may not be necessary to create

a specialized footer. If printed, the browser will add page numbers to the bottom and the URL to the top by default.