When to remove labels for data elements?
Removing labels seems to offer a trade off between clarity and concision. For editable forms, labels are necessary, but when can we forgo them when displaying that data back to an end user?
For example, here's a simple form with labels:
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If you had a read-only view with labels, you could just disable inputs like this:
But if we present just the data and remove field labels altogether, I don't think we lose much clarity, and most users familiar with american names and address could parse the fields back into their original buckets if need be:
Data with well defined structures that has a well defined mapping to a real world analog seems the least risky, but examples of unadorned read-only data exist all of good design.
Here are two examples of content that is immediately presented without the pretense of a label to suggest how the data must be understood. In both cases, it looks almost silly to try to explicitly name those fields in the path to clarity
Certainly the Content Management System being used to edit articles would provide separate input fields, but the rules feel different for presenting that content to end users. Are there any guidelines as to when we can safely remove field labels without introducing ambiguity?