Table selection feedback

[jattasNI]

🎙 Discussion

We've heard feedback from several sources that table selection interactions aren't working well for certain use cases. I'm collecting the feedback here so we can look at them holistically and consolidate discussion.

Use cases

1. @hellovolcano mentioned that internal users don't find it obvious that they can select rows in the table used for Nigel chat history. This is a single select table that implements the "master" side of a "master-detail" pattern. One specific suggestion was that the mouse cursor should change to the pointer when hovered anywhere on the row to indicate that the row is interactive. We've found examples of web tables that both do this (Fluent, MUI) and don't do this (Angular Material table, Sharepoint files table) so @aangerhofer is evaluating whether it's a standard practice.
2. For this same use case, there was a request to change the current selection by just using arrow keys, not needing to enter keyboard focus mode, change focus to a new row, and then press space.
3. A SystemLink customer reported via their Solutions Architect that they didn't realize they needed to select content in the System Details States table. It's also a single select table so we discussed mouse cursor changes there too. We also discussed making it a multiselect table so that the checkboxes would show up (even though there are no multiselect operations for this table, unlike most other SL tables which at least allow multi-delete). Another idea was to show selection affordances in single select mode (e.g. radio buttons instead of checkboxes).
4. At the SystemLink iteration demos on Feb 17 (jump to ~20-22 minutes) there was a demo of another "master-detail" use case for spec conditions. PMs gave feedback about whether the table should be single or multi select. They ultimately realized it needed to support multiselect for mult-edit workflows (e.g. delete) but before deciding that they were considering changing to single select but hesitated based on previous feedback that customers struggled to realize they need to perform a selection. They considered automatically selecting an item by default to avoid this but noted that then there's no way to de-select, which prevents the user from accessing toolbar options that are only available when nothing is selected (e.g. create new).

Ideas

1. Change mouse cursor on all tables that support selection to show the pointer on row hover
2. A mode on the table that just changes the mouse cursor on hover to indicate the whole row is selectable. Add usage guidance about when to use this mode (e.g. only for master-detail use cases?)
3. A mode on the table that captures multiple "master-detail" use cases (mouse cursor and keyboard selection, for example)