Presenting information is an art form. A lot of it depends on what the information is, and also, who the information is for.
One of my basic philosophies, is that the UI needs to get out of the way. This means not always using sexy little animations, everywhere (but still using them, if they also work as useful indicators of state transitions), proper contrast, minimizing overhead, like frames and controls, etc. Also, not crowding the display too much.
That said, sometimes, we need a dense display, if we have been trained for it. That Bloomberg terminal is probably fine, for many folks, because they have been trained for it, and it's a daily tool. A lot of Tufte's designs need to be presented to experienced users.
I remember the first time I looked at the train maps in the Shinagawa Station, in Tokyo. They were confusing AF. After just a couple of days, however, I had them down, and appreciated all that information.
I tried using a fancy paid Git client, once, because it was just so pretty.
After just a few minutes, though, I nuked it, wrote off the purchase, and went back to ugly old SourceTree.
There's also a huge difference between "presenting information" and "presenting actionable information". If a display is required to complete a task it doesn't really matter what it [aesthetically] looks like.
> I remember the first time I looked at the train maps in the Shinagawa Station, in Tokyo.
For an example like that, were they confusing because the complexity of all the train routes were inherently confusing to a newcomer, or because it was a poor visualization?
One fascinating thing about attending a Tufte seminar is after 2 days of a rigorous run through of, so far as I know, the only really rigorous attempt to create a science of design, the Q&A session was 80% people asking something along the lines of "Yeah, but I should still keep doing what I've been doing, because of these reasons that I want you to say are good." Frankly I was impressed that the man didn't literally face-palm, although judging by his expression he was in his mind.
Sadly, so far as I know he's stopped doing live courses.
Presenting information is an art form. A lot of it depends on what the information is, and also, who the information is for.
One of my basic philosophies, is that the UI needs to get out of the way. This means not always using sexy little animations, everywhere (but still using them, if they also work as useful indicators of state transitions), proper contrast, minimizing overhead, like frames and controls, etc. Also, not crowding the display too much.
That said, sometimes, we need a dense display, if we have been trained for it. That Bloomberg terminal is probably fine, for many folks, because they have been trained for it, and it's a daily tool. A lot of Tufte's designs need to be presented to experienced users.
I remember the first time I looked at the train maps in the Shinagawa Station, in Tokyo. They were confusing AF. After just a couple of days, however, I had them down, and appreciated all that information.
I tried using a fancy paid Git client, once, because it was just so pretty.
After just a few minutes, though, I nuked it, wrote off the purchase, and went back to ugly old SourceTree.