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As a former trader, I can say that Bloomberg's UI is, while not perfect, in general quite good. You can do almost everything straight from the keyboard; once y

by ctkrohn 17y ago

As a former trader, I can say that Bloomberg's UI is, while not perfect, in general quite good. You can do almost everything straight from the keyboard; once you get used to it, it's quite fast. In about 30 seconds, I can calculate the yield on a mortgage-backed security, see what the Treasury market is doing today, skim a list of top headlines, and show a graph of the stock market since today's open. Try doing that with Yahoo Finance! In that sense, it's very much in the spirit of any other command line environment. But apart from any UI issues, people continue to use it because of network effects. It's got a great messaging system that everyone uses, and it's got a common set of tools shared across the entire financial system. Old habits die hard, too. Even though I'm no longer trading, I still have an old Bloomberg keyboard on my desk.

marcinw 17y ago
Exactly. Just another blog post by someone who doesn't understand why. Not everything can be web 2.0'd, bubbly and made into an iPhone app.
- Groxx 17y ago
  Replace "can" with "should", and I'll happily agree with you. I'm a vim fan, personally. The keyboard is ideal for high-speed, high-skill interaction. Most GUI-centric applications fail completely in this area, where a lot of old applications had a lot of focus on it. Both is probably the best, but that's hard work and doesn't always fit with the GUI without it being cluttered for a "clean" interface.
ig1 17y ago
Definitely agree. A lot of people use their Bloomberg Terminals completely by keyboard, whenever they even so much as change the tab ordering of fields on a function people complain. A lot of people have the layouts/ordering memorized. Think about how much people complain when Facebook change their UI. Now imagine that if when they changed their layout you weren't able to do your job because it took you twice as long to find some information or if you lost a lot of money because you missed a pricing alert. Users are opposed to change for many reasons other than complexity for complexities sake. If your company is willing to shell out $2k/month to give you a Bloomberg you've got other stuff you can brag about far more than the fact you can use a complex piece of software. But I imagine the real reason they haven't done anything is simply because it's not worth it. Investing a huge amount of money (we're talking in the high tens or low hundreds of millions here) to revamp your GUI without a clear return on investment would be idiotic. They have been tackling the low hanging fruits though (the new graphs, font, etc.).

by ctkrohn 17y ago

marcinw 17y ago

Exactly. Just another blog post by someone who doesn't understand why. Not everything can be web 2.0'd, bubbly and made into an iPhone app.

Groxx 17y ago
Replace "can" with "should", and I'll happily agree with you. I'm a vim fan, personally. The keyboard is ideal for high-speed, high-skill interaction. Most GUI-centric applications fail completely in this area, where a lot of old applications had a lot of focus on it. Both is probably the best, but that's hard work and doesn't always fit with the GUI without it being cluttered for a "clean" interface.

ig1 17y ago

Definitely agree. A lot of people use their Bloomberg Terminals completely by keyboard, whenever they even so much as change the tab ordering of fields on a function people complain. A lot of people have the layouts/ordering memorized. Think about how much people complain when Facebook change their UI. Now imagine that if when they changed their layout you weren't able to do your job because it took you twice as long to find some information or if you lost a lot of money because you missed a pricing alert. Users are opposed to change for many reasons other than complexity for complexities sake. If your company is willing to shell out $2k/month to give you a Bloomberg you've got other stuff you can brag about far more than the fact you can use a complex piece of software. But I imagine the real reason they haven't done anything is simply because it's not worth it. Investing a huge amount of money (we're talking in the high tens or low hundreds of millions here) to revamp your GUI without a clear return on investment would be idiotic. They have been tackling the low hanging fruits though (the new graphs, font, etc.).