OpenRefine
Redesigning the reconciliation dialog of an open-source data-cleaning tool used by researchers, librarians and journalists. Shipped in version 3.8.
Overview
Reconciliation is the step that decides whether a dataset is trustworthy, and it was the step new users abandoned.
Separate issues had piled up around different parts of the workflow: the service picker, column-to-property mappings, the results view. Each had its own proposal. Nobody had looked at them as one journey.
The alternative on the table was to keep improving it in small iterations. I argued for the whole-dialog redesign, in public, to maintainers, which is what issue #6053 became.
The work
Five phases, in the order a reconciliation happens.
Service selection
The sidebar and price icon were removed rather than restyled, and services shown in full with their URLs. Less to interpret beats clearer labelling on something you touch once per dataset.
Column mappings
One dense panel doing three unrelated jobs became a three-step stepper. Settings affecting the whole reconciliation sit above the line; constraints affecting results sit below.
Results display
Results cap at three candidates with an explicit reveal. Reducing the default was a smaller change than building filtering, and it addressed the problem directly.
Language
A language tag input that resolves as you type. Enter “Eng” and it becomes English, built on settings OpenRefine already had rather than a parallel system.
Preview placement
Keep the preview 8px clear of the candidate to its right, 4px below its row. Proposed as a mockup so the rule was visible rather than described.
Outcome
The milestone release carrying the reconciliation work.
Downloads of that release during 2024.
Design handed off December 2023, implemented across the 3.8 series by the OpenRefine engineering team. Their 2024 year in review listed the reconciliation experience among the year’s priorities.
Every screen on this page is in the shipped product, not a proposal.
Screens
Click to select, double-click to open full size.
