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Thanks for reading! > First, there are a few places where non-developers have user interfaces that reward expertise. One prominent example are Bloomberg termin

by brandur 10y ago

Thanks for reading! > First, there are a few places where non-developers have user interfaces that reward expertise. One prominent example are Bloomberg terminals: I didn't mean to say that it was just developers that have access to these sorts of power tools, but it is the most common case. I would have actually used Bloomberg terminals as an example to support my arguments, and in general am hugely in favor of this sort of app that rewards the time invested in learning it all the way up to advanced levels. > The average person pays off their credit card once a month. The incentive for them to learn to do it more efficiently isn't very compelling, and the number of people who have 20 active credit cards for whom it would be compelling isn't large enough to be worth creating an expert UI for. Yes totally, but what if you had just one common UI that was pretty standard and which your credit card company could easily plug into while building interfaces for their users? Modern native apps for smartphones are probably the best example there because even though they're not perfectly consistent, at least they have standardized toolbars, navigation, and controls (far beyond what you get on the web). I think this idea could be take even further.

webmaven 10y ago
> what if you had just one common UI that was pretty standard Yes, well, the reasons that is unlikely is because banks need to differentiate their offerings and... you know what, scratch that. Just observe that this hasn't happened on the desktop in the way you describe, though every so often someone does try to reintermediate an industry in that way, which usually only works if you (a) control the distribution platform, so can bundle in the standard UI to the platform, and (b) manage to fool the industry into going along, eg. iTunes, Kindle). Banks, specifically, have yet to fall for any of the attempts along those lines, and there have been quite a few. The situation is unlikely to change until/unless newly formed banks embrace splitting out the "dumb money pipe" as shared infrastructure and modern standardized interfaces so their value added services are separate (but integrated). To some extent you see glimmers of this in medicine with (almost, but not quite) portable electronic medical records. What progress has come about is solely due to the government ratcheting up the carrots and sticks to get "meaningful use" to happen, and those may get rolled back now.

by brandur 10y ago

webmaven 10y ago

> what if you had just one common UI that was pretty standard Yes, well, the reasons that is unlikely is because banks need to differentiate their offerings and... you know what, scratch that. Just observe that this hasn't happened on the desktop in the way you describe, though every so often someone does try to reintermediate an industry in that way, which usually only works if you (a) control the distribution platform, so can bundle in the standard UI to the platform, and (b) manage to fool the industry into going along, eg. iTunes, Kindle). Banks, specifically, have yet to fall for any of the attempts along those lines, and there have been quite a few. The situation is unlikely to change until/unless newly formed banks embrace splitting out the "dumb money pipe" as shared infrastructure and modern standardized interfaces so their value added services are separate (but integrated). To some extent you see glimmers of this in medicine with (almost, but not quite) portable electronic medical records. What progress has come about is solely due to the government ratcheting up the carrots and sticks to get "meaningful use" to happen, and those may get rolled back now.