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> insane whitespace Good to hear that there’s at least one person involved with it that sees the problem with this. I imagine how the use of whitespace to orga

by tobr 6y ago

> insane whitespace Good to hear that there’s at least one person involved with it that sees the problem with this. I imagine how the use of whitespace to organize the layout probably looked very simple and attractive in Sketch or Figma at some point. Then reality crept in, and that whitespace was gradually carved up into more and more incoherent pieces. And as that was the only indicator of hierarchy and relationships there was to start with, there’s now no organization left at all. Many screens are just a bunch of words, all imperceptibly different shades of dark gray, strewn out randomly over a solid white background. To make things worse, they all seem to be implemented in slightly inconsistent ways (you can tell when an h1 is wrapped in ten (10) layers of nested divs, each just containing the next div) so things that should align are all off by a pixel and have slightly different behaviors.

pmontra 6y ago
Whitespace is good and functional in some contexts but it's detrimental in others. Imagine an Excel sheet with only 10 rows per screen, light gray text and no borders around cells. And yet this is the reality of many lists on many modern web sites. Less than 10 items per page when I could easily read 30 or 40 of them at once instead of scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.
- pbourke 6y ago
  And often scrolling with auto load, so you never really know how far you are from the bottom of the list.
  - prepend 6y ago
    Thank God for “download CSV.” I think it’s funny that I feel like some sites are just captchas to find the link to pull down the data into excel. I wonder if people like this stuff? I mean are there people who mindlessly scroll through this crap and like it?
- mustardo 6y ago
  Vanguard's new website is like this :-( used to be a medium dense table easy to compare records now on my 27" 4k monitor i can see only a handfull and its scroll city :-( https://www.vanguard.com.au/personal/products/en/overview https://www.vanguard.com.au/personal/products/en/overview
  - throw93 6y ago
    Can't help but think of Dieter Rams design principles. Do those principles apply for websites? I mean they are products in a way. For this particular website I think the design is obstructing the functionality. "Good design is unobtrusive - Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression."
    - ViorelMocanu 6y ago
      That's absolutely spot on! Thanks for bringing that argument up. There's a fine line between aesthetically pleasing but functional and artistically inclined and obscure when it comes to this, and it should really be up to the users' preferences. E.g. GMail got it right from the start: let the user choose their way of doing things. If the user wants 100 rows per screen or 10 rows per screen, who are you to deny the user? :)
- Emendo 6y ago
  If someone could mockup a modern card-style design for excel incorporating the above, I think people will really get the inefficency of web sites today.
  - NinjaViking 6y ago
    Something like this? https://i.imgur.com/lBIxryc.png https://i.imgur.com/lBIxryc.png
    - Emendo 6y ago
      Awesome! This looks pretty on a slide deck and is an absolute nightmire to use.
- dserodio 6y ago
  AWS did something similar in the new EC2 console. Too much whitespace, too little information. I'm glad they iterated and improved information density.
gfodor 6y ago
The whitespace craze is directly at odds with Tufte-ite principles on good information design - for knowledge workers there is a delicate balance between establishing hierarchy via whitespace and producing visualizations which are appropriately dense with information. My guess is that the root cause as usual comes from designers not being consumers of the product - if they were, this trade off would be obvious.
smoe 6y ago
I think plenty of whitespace in general (I don't know the mentioned tools that much), when done well, is a good default, because I reckon the majority of users only handle a small number of things in such tools and whitespace can help readability and look better. But the more information you have to manage, the more it gets in the way up to uselessness. I just wish any tool would have some toggle or slider where one could adjust spacing on the fly

by tobr 6y ago

pmontra 6y ago

Whitespace is good and functional in some contexts but it's detrimental in others. Imagine an Excel sheet with only 10 rows per screen, light gray text and no borders around cells. And yet this is the reality of many lists on many modern web sites. Less than 10 items per page when I could easily read 30 or 40 of them at once instead of scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

pbourke 6y ago
And often scrolling with auto load, so you never really know how far you are from the bottom of the list.
- prepend 6y ago
  Thank God for “download CSV.” I think it’s funny that I feel like some sites are just captchas to find the link to pull down the data into excel. I wonder if people like this stuff? I mean are there people who mindlessly scroll through this crap and like it?
mustardo 6y ago
Vanguard's new website is like this :-( used to be a medium dense table easy to compare records now on my 27" 4k monitor i can see only a handfull and its scroll city :-( https://www.vanguard.com.au/personal/products/en/overview https://www.vanguard.com.au/personal/products/en/overview
- throw93 6y ago
  Can't help but think of Dieter Rams design principles. Do those principles apply for websites? I mean they are products in a way. For this particular website I think the design is obstructing the functionality. "Good design is unobtrusive - Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression."
  - ViorelMocanu 6y ago
    That's absolutely spot on! Thanks for bringing that argument up. There's a fine line between aesthetically pleasing but functional and artistically inclined and obscure when it comes to this, and it should really be up to the users' preferences. E.g. GMail got it right from the start: let the user choose their way of doing things. If the user wants 100 rows per screen or 10 rows per screen, who are you to deny the user? :)
Emendo 6y ago
If someone could mockup a modern card-style design for excel incorporating the above, I think people will really get the inefficency of web sites today.
- NinjaViking 6y ago
  Something like this? https://i.imgur.com/lBIxryc.png https://i.imgur.com/lBIxryc.png
  - Emendo 6y ago
    Awesome! This looks pretty on a slide deck and is an absolute nightmire to use.
dserodio 6y ago
AWS did something similar in the new EC2 console. Too much whitespace, too little information. I'm glad they iterated and improved information density.

gfodor 6y ago

The whitespace craze is directly at odds with Tufte-ite principles on good information design - for knowledge workers there is a delicate balance between establishing hierarchy via whitespace and producing visualizations which are appropriately dense with information. My guess is that the root cause as usual comes from designers not being consumers of the product - if they were, this trade off would be obvious.

smoe 6y ago

I think plenty of whitespace in general (I don't know the mentioned tools that much), when done well, is a good default, because I reckon the majority of users only handle a small number of things in such tools and whitespace can help readability and look better. But the more information you have to manage, the more it gets in the way up to uselessness. I just wish any tool would have some toggle or slider where one could adjust spacing on the fly