Wide tables lose context too fast.
As users move across dense list views, important columns can disappear off-screen, making comparison slower and decision-making less confident.
Project / 05
Column Pinning Exploration
A focused ServiceNow exploration on how pinned columns can feel clearer, more predictable, and more useful inside dense list workflows.
I partnered with Michael to explore how column pinning could work more clearly inside ServiceNow list views, where data density and horizontal scrolling make orientation especially important.
The project looked beyond the pinned state itself and focused on the surrounding signals that make the interaction understandable: dividers, shadows on scroll, icon placement, and the balance between discoverability and visual noise.
Discuss this project ↗Context
Reframing a small table behavior as a much bigger orientation problem.
Column pinning looks simple on the surface, but inside dense enterprise tables it quickly becomes a question of discoverability, visual noise, and how users keep context while scrolling.
The hard part was not just pinning a column.
I explored when to show dividers, how shadows should animate on scroll, and where the pin icon should appear so the pattern feels discoverable without becoming visually heavy.
Two directions clarified the tradeoffs.
The explorations helped compare a more explicit “easy pin” approach against a quieter “no icon” direction, making the design tradeoffs much easier to discuss and evaluate.
Directions
The comparison focused on affordance versus visual restraint.
Instead of deciding too early, I treated the sprint as a side-by-side evaluation of two different interaction philosophies, then used the mockups to clarify what each one gained and lost.
Easy Pin made the pattern more explicit.
This direction leaned into stronger affordances so users could immediately understand what was pinned and how the table would behave while navigating across the list.
No Icon reduced noise and relied on cleaner visual cues.
This alternative tested whether the interface could communicate pinned behavior more elegantly through layout, motion, and dividers rather than additional iconography.
Small visual choices reshape workflow confidence.
This sprint taught me how much clarity in enterprise UX depends on restraint, especially when designing within existing system patterns and implementation constraints.
Outcome
The project made a small UX pattern easier to discuss, test, and scale inside a larger system.
Even without building the full production feature, the sprint created a clearer language for how pinned behavior should look, when it should announce itself, and how subtle motion can support orientation.
The value was in surrounding cues.
Dividers, shadows, and icon behavior ended up being more important than the pinned state alone because they determined whether the pattern felt predictable.
Explicitness and elegance pull in opposite directions.
The sprint made it easier to compare a louder but more teachable pattern against a quieter solution that relied on stronger visual discipline.
Enterprise confidence lives in small details.
This project reminded me that seemingly minor interaction surfaces can meaningfully affect speed, orientation, and trust when users work inside dense data-heavy environments.
