4 ms·

Am I the only one like dense information? There is judicious use of whitespace (Swiss layout, Brockmann et. al) and then there is the whole material UX enchilad

Am I the only one like dense information? There is judicious use of whitespace (Swiss layout, Brockmann et. al) and then there is the whole material UX enchilada. I prefer Foobar2000 over Apple Music. Give me dense, logical and flat layout over 50 page long hierarchical layout full of whitespace. Whitespace is tiring when used extensively.

jvagner 8y ago
For me, the latest example is Youtube Music versus Spotify. When I subscribe to channels in Youtube Music, it kills the performance of my Youtube iOS app thumbnail downloads. So, I used a nifty service (http://soundiiz.com http://soundiiz.com) to sync my artists across multiple services. I hate the idea of paying for Yet Another Service, especially because I'm paying for one (Youtube Premium) that's useless for music because Google won't respond to bug reports, but I started to spend some time in Spotify. Spotify is uglier than Youtube Music, but a thousand times more useful. Part of that is the more active community (artists that I like which have 0 followers on Youtube Music will have hundreds or thousands of followers on Spotify) and more engaging playlists, and part of it is that I was able to "get" Spotify features and navigation quicker than Youtube Music... which is still feature poor as they migrate from Play Music to Youtube Music. So, to me.. Spotify is uglier and far more useful.
britch 8y ago
I feel like there's a conflation of density with bad design. A lot of good design is minimalist. I don't know if it has to be. Sometimes it makes sense to present a lot of information in a dense block
duxup 8y ago
It really depends on the use case, but yeah dense can be fine. But imagine staring at Foobar2000 all day as if it is your primary work. You probabbly are looking for just some of the data most of the time and filtering the rest... so in that case maybe less would be better. On the other hand if you glance at it and want lots of data without clicks, then dense is great. But your point about "logical" is the key for dense stuff, and getting to what is "logical" can be hard.
- fermienrico 8y ago
  Have you heard of Bloomberg Terminal? Thousands of people stare at BT all day long full of dense information. You can attest to its success by the fact that it is the defacto standard in financial analysis. Bloomberg could make it "modern" full of whitespace but they deliberately don't. Dense contextual information in my view is better than whitespace decorated vomit that we see in today's UX/UI trends.
  - duxup 8y ago
    I'll go back to saying it depends on use case. The folks staring at Bloomberg Terminal want all that data. If it was a website and I just wanted to get one chunk of data, change one setting, might be a pain.
    - stormking 8y ago
      And that's the main problem. Today's designers don't differentiate between websites and "serious" applications. A website must be easy to navigate without any training because it's one of several hundred that the user visits each week. Any learnings are forgotten anyway on the next visit. So it has to be completely self-explanatory. A "serious" application on the other side is used for several hours every day. Efficiency beats simplicity in that case because that three-day crash course a user might need in the beginning is neglectable in comparison to just five minutes of saved time per session on later use. But most UX designers these days only seem to know casual, consumer-oriented - and then try to apply the same recipes to enterprise apps. It's almost always a disaster.
- manigandham 8y ago
  People are already naturally good at filtering out irrelevant information automatically. We do this all day as we take in data and focus on what we want. So a dense UI can be naturally worked with while a lean UI offers no alternative.
Tepix 8y ago
The learning curve is much steeper with a dense interface. So if you only use a software occasionally you may be better off with a friendly looking interface that hides stuff from you unless you need it.
- fermienrico 8y ago
  You make a really good point. Checking into a flight should not be buried into some dense corner of the website. Users need to do that in one click and not very often. A retail POS UI that's used daily should be optimized for dense logical layout at the expense of learning curve.
Mindwipe 8y ago
Whitespace is toxic in design. As a trend I can't wait for it to die in fire.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  it's a tool. As with many tools in our industry it has acquired hype, leading it to be used in situations where it isn't appropriate. That doesn't detract from the fact that there are appropriate cases for it.
- frosted-flakes 8y ago
  Too much white space is bad. White space is not a trend. That's like saying colour is a trend. Proper use of white space is an essential part of good design. But when there's so much space between elements on a page that it shoots the page height to the moon, that's bad.

jvagner 8y ago

For me, the latest example is Youtube Music versus Spotify. When I subscribe to channels in Youtube Music, it kills the performance of my Youtube iOS app thumbnail downloads. So, I used a nifty service (http://soundiiz.com http://soundiiz.com) to sync my artists across multiple services. I hate the idea of paying for Yet Another Service, especially because I'm paying for one (Youtube Premium) that's useless for music because Google won't respond to bug reports, but I started to spend some time in Spotify. Spotify is uglier than Youtube Music, but a thousand times more useful. Part of that is the more active community (artists that I like which have 0 followers on Youtube Music will have hundreds or thousands of followers on Spotify) and more engaging playlists, and part of it is that I was able to "get" Spotify features and navigation quicker than Youtube Music... which is still feature poor as they migrate from Play Music to Youtube Music. So, to me.. Spotify is uglier and far more useful.

britch 8y ago

I feel like there's a conflation of density with bad design. A lot of good design is minimalist. I don't know if it has to be. Sometimes it makes sense to present a lot of information in a dense block

duxup 8y ago

It really depends on the use case, but yeah dense can be fine. But imagine staring at Foobar2000 all day as if it is your primary work. You probabbly are looking for just some of the data most of the time and filtering the rest... so in that case maybe less would be better. On the other hand if you glance at it and want lots of data without clicks, then dense is great. But your point about "logical" is the key for dense stuff, and getting to what is "logical" can be hard.

fermienrico 8y ago
Have you heard of Bloomberg Terminal? Thousands of people stare at BT all day long full of dense information. You can attest to its success by the fact that it is the defacto standard in financial analysis. Bloomberg could make it "modern" full of whitespace but they deliberately don't. Dense contextual information in my view is better than whitespace decorated vomit that we see in today's UX/UI trends.
- duxup 8y ago
  I'll go back to saying it depends on use case. The folks staring at Bloomberg Terminal want all that data. If it was a website and I just wanted to get one chunk of data, change one setting, might be a pain.
  - stormking 8y ago
    And that's the main problem. Today's designers don't differentiate between websites and "serious" applications. A website must be easy to navigate without any training because it's one of several hundred that the user visits each week. Any learnings are forgotten anyway on the next visit. So it has to be completely self-explanatory. A "serious" application on the other side is used for several hours every day. Efficiency beats simplicity in that case because that three-day crash course a user might need in the beginning is neglectable in comparison to just five minutes of saved time per session on later use. But most UX designers these days only seem to know casual, consumer-oriented - and then try to apply the same recipes to enterprise apps. It's almost always a disaster.
manigandham 8y ago
People are already naturally good at filtering out irrelevant information automatically. We do this all day as we take in data and focus on what we want. So a dense UI can be naturally worked with while a lean UI offers no alternative.

Tepix 8y ago

The learning curve is much steeper with a dense interface. So if you only use a software occasionally you may be better off with a friendly looking interface that hides stuff from you unless you need it.

fermienrico 8y ago
You make a really good point. Checking into a flight should not be buried into some dense corner of the website. Users need to do that in one click and not very often. A retail POS UI that's used daily should be optimized for dense logical layout at the expense of learning curve.

Mindwipe 8y ago

Whitespace is toxic in design. As a trend I can't wait for it to die in fire.

beaconstudios 8y ago
it's a tool. As with many tools in our industry it has acquired hype, leading it to be used in situations where it isn't appropriate. That doesn't detract from the fact that there are appropriate cases for it.
frosted-flakes 8y ago
Too much white space is bad. White space is not a trend. That's like saying colour is a trend. Proper use of white space is an essential part of good design. But when there's so much space between elements on a page that it shoots the page height to the moon, that's bad.