Tasks: About this data

[sophiamersmann]

Designs on Figma | Example charts on Notion

Project outline (click to expand)

Background

• This year we completely redesigned our metadata so that we could give people much more context in key places, including the grapher page and the sources tab.
• Traditionally the “tab of shame”, the sources tab was often a dumping ground for various information we wanted to link to indicators.
• The Grapher redesign to ship imminently replaces the sources tab with a metadata overlay, but only an MVP of it will ship at first.

Goal for this cycle

Ship an upgraded metadata overlay that beautifully renders new metadata when it’s available, and still looks great with old metadata.

Rabbit holes / scope risk

Old and new metadata

• Today, nearly all the metadata shown this way will be old metadata
• We hope that by year's end, all new or updated charts will have new metadata

To de-risk: plan to get to a rendering prototype quickly, then do design iteration from there

Multi-indicator charts

• Some charts have multiple indicators (up to 25 in the worst case)
• Currently unclear if we want to de-duplicate the metadata if all indicators have a common dataset
• If we decide not to de-duplicate, we're not currently sure how to best accommodate many indicators in the sources modal

To de-risk: plan to get to a rendering prototype quickly, then do design iteration from there

Hyperlink entry point - OUT OF SCOPE

• We changed the entry point to a hyperlink, from a tab
  • We think that many fewer people will click to reveal this information now
• We have resolved not to worry about it this cycle though

Data page linking - OUT OF SCOPE

• We would ideally consider how to link from the sources info to the data page
• But it's out of scope for this cycle
• In any case, clicking on the chart title will take you to the data page if one exists

Implementation plan

Must have

• Build up the necessary UI and components using an example of a well curated indicator with new metadata (best-case scenario; example) Daniel moves Datapage components useful for the sources modal into a shared folder
  • Until we have better solution, simply stack multiple indicators
• Make it work for less optimal cases (potential 🐇 -hole)
  • sparse metadata v2 (example)
  • old metadata (example)
  • hybrid metadata (example)
• Make it work for multiple indicators
  • will either be de-duplicated (potential 🐇 -hole) or be accounted for (e.g. tabs, dropdown, ...)

Nice to have

• Support more Markdown syntax: Data pages: switch to a new markdown parser and renderer #2758 (Daniel looks into this)

Stack (ongoing work)

• Sources modal: simplify CoreColumnDef #2794
  • Data page: About this data (& refactor shared components) #2853
    • Build sources modal from shared components #2877
      • Sources modal: Multiple indicators #2886

Clean up

• Sources modal and data table should be using the same name for an indicator (example)
• Refactor other modals to make use of shared styles (and ignore the base font size)

Related issues

• Charts with x axis override display wrong variable time span #1501
• Data pages: source tab hotfixes #2756