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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)?

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much additional traffic, links, seo benefit and general brand awareness this site has generated simply off doing things to this standard. A fly wheel of benefits.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I've never seen a McMaster link in any search engine. Even if you google a direct McMaster part number, like "91251A449", McMaster will not be among the results. While the url to that product is just https://www.mcmaster.com/91251A449/

No idea if intentional or not, but the reason is this noindex directive:

    

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

#132
post #125

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…

I worked as an EMR consultant for a few years, helping teach medical staff to use these things. The thing that struck me was that while some of the UIs look "outdated" by web standards, the software often did a great of taking medical staff through their daily workflows. I feel like a lot of websites do the opposite - they look nice, but using them is a pain.

(Conversely, most staff hated new EMRs, because it enforced doing things the hospital wants its staff to do for liability and billing, but the staff doesn't want to do - for example, asking Maternity nurses to talk to new mothers about smoking cessation.)

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

#133
post #125

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…

They are infamous for being trash and difficult to use though. There's an entire field of "EMR consultants". It's also why there's a EMR startup on hacker news every other week.

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

#134
post #81

https://old.reddit.com We used to have an even denser display, but they sadly got rid of it. It was the original reddit mobile interface (served as a webpage, not an app). There is a screenshot on this blog post (by one of the guys who worked on it): https://pdx.su/blog/2023-04-06-rip-reddit-compact/

Came here to say the same. Old Reddit is such a fantasticly dense, yet readable UI. It doesn't have too much whitespace, but there is enough so there's always room to click on nothing.

It is absolutely my preferred UI for consuming large amounts of information quickly.

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

#135
post #33

Programs used by pro creatives. Some people regularly spend 8h/day using a single such product as their primary work tool. E.g. pro desktop versions of photo, print, video, sound, etc editing software usually feature good UX and high information density. One well known example of that is Blender - here is a chapter from their manual about its user interface: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/interface/window_…

Agreed! I use Cinema 4D, Illustrator and other tools on the daily and I love the fact that I can rearrange my panels how I need. That's something that I notice modern web-based UIs based on 1960s gestalt doesn't really have. Plus all of them are dense because of functions, not for fluff. I really, really like Cinema 4D for that reason, their design choices are top notch.

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

#136
post #17

Look for tracing/profiling/binary analysis UIs: - https://superuser.com/questions/1117466/using-windows-perfor... - https://github.com/wolfpld/tracy - https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex 3D modeling / CAD software: - Blender/Rhino etc - Similar for audio you can search for 'DAWs' ( https://blog.landr.com/best-daw/ ) Many examples on https://x.com/usgraphics/media only some software. Not on the data side but can be usefu…

have to agree with you on the DAWs. The first time I opened FL Studio I felt like I was looking at an aircraft's control panel.

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

#137
post #81

https://old.reddit.com We used to have an even denser display, but they sadly got rid of it. It was the original reddit mobile interface (served as a webpage, not an app). There is a screenshot on this blog post (by one of the guys who worked on it): https://pdx.su/blog/2023-04-06-rip-reddit-compact/

This.

I still use old reddit with RES. It's a bit ugly but perfectly functional. Tried the newer web versions a couple of times over the years and just hate the whole experience.

A couple of years ago I considered building a web client for Reddit but then the whole API thing happened.

Maybe it's time to build a new Reddit? :)

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

#138
post #81

https://old.reddit.com We used to have an even denser display, but they sadly got rid of it. It was the original reddit mobile interface (served as a webpage, not an app). There is a screenshot on this blog post (by one of the guys who worked on it): https://pdx.su/blog/2023-04-06-rip-reddit-compact/

Came here to say the same. Old Reddit is such a fantasticly dense, yet readable UI. It doesn't have too much whitespace, but there is enough so there's always room to click on nothing. It is absolutely my preferred UI for consuming large amounts of information quickly.

Reddit absolutely dropped the ball with the redesign

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

#139
If you are looking for a UI framework, checkout IBM Carbon: https://carbondesignsystem.com

I used it to build a merge conflict tool: https://codeinput.com and while it required a much deeper understanding than just reading the docs (tons of bugs), it is by far the most comprehensive UI framework out there. Most UIs either lack lots of components or are made by a couple front-end/react/css guys. This inevitably means that they lack research into things like typography, accessibility, patterns, etc..

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

#140
One of the motivations i build lanes.pm (a project management tool) was to counter that the only information dense UIs still being around seem to be spreadsheets / table views. Tables have their place but also lots of drawbacks for many workflows. One other great example is ableton live and a few other pro video/ 3d/ music suites. Especially ableton live is as dense as possible while still feeling elegant without tripping over or feeling fiddly.
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