| ▲ | rbanffy 3 hours ago |
| I have the highest regard for these terse, but information-dense displays that enable humans to quickly grasp all information they need to do their jobs, and nothing more. This is also something avionics provide - a modern cockpit displays are a work of art in layering needed information for what is happening at the time, both the dense PFD and the much specific that communicate aircraft status. |
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| ▲ | nxobject 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I know it's impossible, but I've always loved to get a hands-on demo... I'd love to learn the UI patterns involved, for example. I can always make my Emacs faster to interact with, dammit! |
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| ▲ | gleglegle an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | They have some public demos!
https://youtu.be/ZAYiEyaUk2M?t=143&is=fXjn7PcE47Dw2Ayf | |
| ▲ | lolpython an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If you're in New York City, the New York Public Library has a terminal you can use. | | |
| ▲ | bojangleslover an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | There were two in the Greenwich CT library when I lived there in 2019, not sure if they’re still around. | |
| ▲ | peterleiser an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wow, really? Do they limit your time on it? I would imagine that thing is in constant demand. | | |
| ▲ | lolpython an hour ago | parent [-] | | It’s a two hour time limit and you can only take pen and paper with you inside (no photos/data export) |
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| ▲ | peterleiser an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I had occasional access to a Bloomberg terminal 20 years ago and I still miss it. I miss it a lot. I wish they offered a cheaper option for users who only need to use it infrequently. I mean, $25,000 annually is brutal if you're not a broker-dealer. | | |
| ▲ | CamperBob2 6 minutes ago | parent [-] | | What does the terminal really give you that you can't get from various other data sources scattered around the Internet, like your brokerage's own API, third-party data sources, various forums and subreddits, ...? Is it just the real-time firehose nature of the thing? |
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| ▲ | ACS_Solver an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I love displays from space vehicles and nuclear plants for the same reason. Data and controls organized in a dense but presumably highly usable manner. And it covers the more specific view of an expert in a particular subsystem, as well as the higher level view of those responsible for the whole system. |
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| ▲ | rubyn00bie 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Yeah, I think this is something a lot folks miss when doing UI/UX these days. There’s an immense focus on new users, not on folks who rely on it day in and day out for actual work. I’ve seen loads of old, incredibly “ugly” UIs that absolutely mog newer friendlier attempts at the same. They’re absolutely intimidating to new users, but once folks learn it they’re indispensable and obviously intentional. I really wish there was a resurgence of information dense UIs and tools, optimizing for people who use them daily and not “use it once.” It really reminds me of the hate folks have for things like Eclipse or IntelliJ which are daunting at first but once you get over the shock and learn them really are amazing tools. |
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| ▲ | mandevil an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | https://x.com/scottew/status/1751357591375208689 The difference is that Costco pays their employees well enough to keep them around (notice that Costco prints the start year on each employee badge- average retail length of service is 1 year, Costco keeps people around for decades) and so they can learn to use this older software and master it. Most retail operations optimize their inventory management for new people, because they don't expect someone to stick around long enough to master it. My wife worked at a small regional chain of pharmacies that had an ancient MS-DOS based EHR system. And she mastered that system to the point where people would call her when she was home with me and ask her how to do something, and she would walk them through "okay, hit tab three times then shift-F12 then enter the frabble and then alt-F3 to go to the next screen and enter the drabble." It was difficult to learn it, but if you mastered it you could do everything you needed to do from just muscle memory while you were on the phone arguing with the doctor's office that their prescription was not correct and needed to be changed. Then the small chain got bought by a national player and their brand new GUI system was brought in. It was a lot easier to learn- discoverability was a lot higher with menus and drop-downs and all of that. But if you stuck around to master it, you could never be as fast as you could with the older system. And that emphasis on quickly integrating new employees- but lower payoff for experience in employees- was clear in every choice that national chain made. They wanted their employees to be completely interchangeable, which meant that they didn't care if you had six months of experience or four years of experience or three decades of experience. | | |
| ▲ | hylaride an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Same story at my bank. Tellers used to speed run through a TUI, hitting tab and other key combos to accomplish things. Now it's a long wait with them mousing around. | |
| ▲ | peterleiser an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Agreed. Also, you can try to satisfy both new and expert users. It take more thought and design, but that principle is in both Nielsen's Heuristics and Shneiderman's Golden Rules. |
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| ▲ | AbsurdCensor an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think that's the 'push/pull' problem though. Information dense UI that takes months or years to learn, or something that may be less information dense, but a monkey can learn it in minutes. For me, it's typically a balance between speed and efficency of data to help you make decisions quickly, but should be able to be used by anyone with technical experience. So less of both. Less 'pretty UI' and less "omfg here is every piece of information shoved together and you need to be a wizard to understand it" | |
| ▲ | apaprocki 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You’re reminding me of this thread I found a long time ago where someone was talking about the old amber-screen library computers that felt FAST. The gif here shows what it would look like to read Twitter in that manner… https://x.com/apaprocki/status/1230241842928791552 | | |
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