DataTable - Unique Identifiers

[vavalos5]

During office hours, Sam, Derek and Edgar all questioned whether unique identifiers are needed within a DataTable. Many people do not understand what unique identifiers are and what the reasoning behind having the first column of items being bold. Lets create guidance explaining what they are and when they are needed or reasoning behind why we currently use them on each example.

[taysea]

Pasting from a Design System team discussion on DataTable affordances:

DataTable success criteria: As a consumer of tabular data, I would like to…

1. Be able for my eye to track along a singular row of data so that I can make associations across the attributes in that record
2. Be able to easily understand which table cells I can interact with to reveal more detail
   1. Use an anchor instead of button
   2. Use different text color
   3. Change hover state styling (underline, different cursor, background color, etc.)
   4. Icon that indicates clickable things
3. Be able to differentiate between one record and another which may have similar attributes
4. Be able to differentiate between static and interactive cell elements
5. Be able to uniquely identify a given record so that I am able to quickly compare rows and/or find a specific record
6. See the data sorted/filtered in a pre-defined way that accelerates my ability to compare rows/find a specific record/etc.

Next steps

• For the sub-bullets, explore the visual treatments and share out. See what we gravitate towards

[ericsoderberghp]

Is there an example of a particular table that doesn't seem to need unique identifiers?