Advantages of Charts | Chart and Table Alternatively
Charts should be preferred to tables whenever it is important for the users to quickly and easily recognize characteristics of data. Scanning data in tables takes longer, and important data are easily overlooked in tables.
Therefore it is important not to use chart types that are fancy, but distort relations between data, like 3D charts. Such charts should be used with care, and the data should be accompanied by numbers in order to avoid misinterpretations.
This is especially important, if time pressure or high risk are involved.
In cases where charts help to easily grasp the essence of the data but where also exact values are needed, you may consider to provide both a chart view and a table view.
Start with the chart view and offer a button (below the chart or table) for toggling between the views:
Figure 1: The chart view
Figure 2: The alternative table view (with additional status column)
Note: Typically, status columns are arranged to the left of the table; this example deviates from this rule in order to keep the layout stable. In other cases there will be less similarity between the table view and the chart view (here a bar chart table).
