Reporting
Writing cohort tables that executives will finish
A cohort table is a filing cabinet until someone writes a headline above it. We see twelve-week grids, colour scales borrowed from a heatmap tutorial, and a CPO who stops at row three. That is not a literacy problem on their side. It is a writing problem on ours.
One question per table
If the table is answering “did first-order PromptPay users return after the KYC change,” every column that does not serve that question leaves. Acquisition source can wait. Device OS can wait. The appendix exists for a reason. Executives do not fail at heatmaps; they fail at hunting.
We ask studio participants to speak the question aloud before they screenshot the grid. If the spoken sentence and the column headers disagree, the table is lying by sprawl.
Row labels in human language
“2026-W05” is a warehouse key. “Week of 2 Feb — post KYC letter” is a report label. Rename the rows. Keep the ISO week in a tooltip if you must. The people who fund the product do not live in ISO weeks.
Colour is not an argument
Red-to-green scales imply moral judgement. A 22% return week is not “bad” if the corridor is late-night entertainment after a holiday. We prefer a single muted fill for the cell you want read, and no fill everywhere else. The caption does the arguing.
The caption test
Read the caption without looking at the grid. If a colleague on the BTS can repeat the finding, the table may stay. If they ask you to “just walk them through it,” the table is still a filing cabinet. Rewrite the caption. Then delete two columns. Then try again.
Audience Insight Studio spends part of module four on this test. It is unglamorous. It is why some alumni still argue with our homework load. The Friday pack gets shorter anyway.