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Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?

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Re: Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?

#121

Post by philistine »

philistine wrote: post #118
mg wrote: post #9

I am developing this project, which replaces product lists with what I call "product charts": https://www.productchart.com The idea is to sort products not by one parameter (like price or release date) but by two - which creates an x/y chart. The product info is displayed dynamically - by default only the image is show. On hover, more info is displayed in a tooltip. And when you click "details", all data is shown. Th…

Great website, the monitor section does not easily cover the use case of macOS users. We want Retina grade displays (5K at 27-inches, 6K at 32-inches). I don't think you even have Apple's monitors?

Oh and that drive (https://www.productchart.com/ssd_drives/22778) is marked as 20$ per GB, when it's a 1 TB drive for 50$. Many drives have the same problem.

Re: Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?

#122

Post by dbl000 »

It's not just information density but rather intended use design. A lot of engineering/manufacturing parts suppliers tend to have good information dense websites that are really catered to their customers for finding parts.

Take mouser.com, digikey.com, grainger.com rockauto.com or mcmaster.com. They all have a bit of a "landing page" but once you go to search for parts you've got something that was really designed to be an intuitive parts search. Compare that with jameco.com which competes with mouser/digikey but has a more classic webshop search system. It’s a bit more frustrating to use.

Some news sites also do a great job of presenting headlines and highlights well in a small area. I think semafor.com is probably my current favorite, but I'll readily admit that it's not the most information dense.

CAD software also tends to be good at this, but that might be just because the UI has chugged along since the 90's. AutoCAD/Inventor/Solidworks/SolidEdge/KiCAD/Altium/Virtuoso are all great examples where if you've got prior experience with them (or even similar software) you can sit down and quickly get up to speed on a project and see what's been done. I think the distinction is that a lot of software/websites are designed to keep the average user focused on a single aspect and so they are designed to either remove or hide the complexity but for more “professional” level tools you need all that data and information. You can probably blame (for better or for worse) material UI for a lot of this spaced-out thing. In my mind that was the first mobile first UI scheme that really took off and it's basically influenced everything that's come sense then. Computer first software might be your best bet to get some examples. Because a lot of the web is mobile first/mobile forward now you probably aren't going to find a lot of examples on that. I would love to see examples of information dense mobile first sites.

A few other examples I just wanted to brain dump:

- labgopher.com

- tld-list.com

- The Bloomberg Terminal

- Ghidra

- Most plane cockpits, especially modern fighter planes if you ever get to see/sit on one.

- A lot of “professional level creative software” – Reaper, Affinity

- Train control and monitoring systems

Re: Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?

#123

Post by codingclaws »

I develop a HN/Reddit clone [0] that has high density settings. The home page is fairly high density by default. But if you go into the settings [1], then you can really crank up the home page UI density by setting posts per page to 50 and post spacing to 2. The density is more apparent on desktop since the lines don't wrap.

[0] https://www.commentcastles.org

[1] https://www.commentcastles.org/settings

Re: Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?

#124

Post by aqfamnzc »

alnwlsn wrote: post #100
abound wrote: post #21

I didn't see anyone mention the McMaster-Carr website [1]. It may not be the "densest" out there, but it's clean, functional, and nicely presents a lot of information at once. [1] https://www.mcmaster.com/

I'm going to go against the crowd and say that I prefer DigiKey and Mouser's sites over McMaster. The filter/apply pattern they use when trying to narrow things down is a lot quicker than waiting for Mcmaster's auto updating window. Usually, when I'm looking for something, it's not for an exact specific item, but to know what options are even there in the first place. Selecting ranges of things in McMaster has always…

The calculator is an extreme example, but I've wondered in the past if the reason they scrub everything is so you can't take the manufacturer part number to buy elsewhere. McMaster is undoubtedly more expensive in many cases, but the service they offer is consolidating a million parts into one catalog with CAD drawings, specs, etc. Hiding branding prevents you from taking advantage of that without making a purchase.

Re: Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?

#125

Post by meew0 »

Any EMR (electronic medical record) would probably fit this description. For example Epic, the leading one in the US: https://www.emrsystems.net/epic-ehr-software/ Or Orbis, the leading one in Europe: (there's not many good screenshots of it online but this PDF has a few) https://www.bfarm.de/SharedDocs/Kundeninfos/DE/09/2023/32261...

There's a myriad of other ones as well, they all have similar UIs, with the primary goals being to never hide any important info from the user, and to let the user take important actions quickly. That naturally leads to high density. Nevertheless it needs to be reasonably intuitive, since doctors and nurses tend to not be very tech-savvy, which leads to some interesting design constraints.

Re: Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?

#126

Post by mg »

philistine wrote: post #118
mg wrote: post #9

I am developing this project, which replaces product lists with what I call "product charts": https://www.productchart.com The idea is to sort products not by one parameter (like price or release date) but by two - which creates an x/y chart. The product info is displayed dynamically - by default only the image is show. On hover, more info is displayed in a tooltip. And when you click "details", all data is shown. Th…

Great website, the monitor section does not easily cover the use case of macOS users. We want Retina grade displays (5K at 27-inches, 6K at 32-inches). I don't think you even have Apple's monitors?

Yes, product selection is not perfect yet. I originally set out to display the 300 most relevant products in each category. It is probably better to have a larger set of products in each category.

I will tackle that. Not sure yet how hard / easy it will be. Because more than 300 items on the screen initially might make them too small. And adding more as one uses the filters might be confusing.

Re: Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?

#127

Post by mg »

philistine wrote: post #121
philistine wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great website, the monitor section does not easily cover the use case of macOS users. We want Retina grade displays (5K at 27-inches, 6K at 32-inches). I don't think you even have Apple's monitors?

Oh and that drive ( https://www.productchart.com/ssd_drives/22778 ) is marked as 20$ per GB, when it's a 1 TB drive for 50$. Many drives have the same problem.

It is 20 GB per Dollar.

Re: Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?

#129

Post by alnwlsn »

kube-system wrote: post #112
alnwlsn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to go against the crowd and say that I prefer DigiKey and Mouser's sites over McMaster. The filter/apply pattern they use when trying to narrow things down is a lot quicker than waiting for Mcmaster's auto updating window. Usually, when I'm looking for something, it's not for an exact specific item, but to know what options are even there in the first place. Selecting ranges of things in McMaster has always…

I kind of like how they genericize everything. It reduces the cognitive load of making decisions, and presents all of the options in the most uniform way, based on their hard specs, and not marketing BS.

It's ok most of the time, but it's not like they sell McMaster branded stuff in McMaster packaging. They are a supplier, and might want to obfuscate to keep you from buying direct from the actual manufacturers.

On the other hand, on my desk right now is a bag of springs, the info printed on it says it was made by WB Jones, part number 4011. We ordered it from McMaster. Why not? They stock the item and ship super quick. If I want another bag of the same springs, it's not like I can go to McMaster, type in "springs 4011" and expect to find it. Instead, I'll have to search up purchasing requests I've made, maybe ask a coworker if they ordered them, etc. to find the mcmaster number again. If I didn't know Mcmaster sold it to us, I'd have no idea they sold it at all.

To be fair, if they sell things that are interchangeable, like screws, it would be a lot to list every manufacturer they use. They have 5 locations, and probably stock from a different manufacturer or multiple manufacturers at each one.

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