* Why change to something that's "almost as useful" .. that's a downgrade.
* Pretty is often the enemy of Consistent.
On that second point, it doesn't have to be .. but it can take a great deal more effort to have data presentation that's both creative and consistent and dense.
The domain goals here are rapid navigation of dense infomation across tens of thousands of companies, timespans, portfolios, groupings, comparisons, etc. With a good interface the user quickly finds the desired scope and view and automatically eye tracks to the wanted figures.
It's not an interface for pretty board room presentations (although in an organisation that promotes based on merit in the ditches most senior staff would be familiar with a Bloomberg Board) - it's a daily driver for engine room.
I'm not defending this specific interface, just highlighting what is common to many similar domain tools.
> Why change to something that's "almost as useful" .. that's a downgrade.
To clarify: There would be two modes, for example, when looking at the prices of options you might want to see the shape of the smile (e.g. equivalent to the markets view of a certain probability distribution), but when trading a specific option you want to know everything about it down to exact prices.
it's not about pretty-ness, indeed some of these charts can be completely incomprehensible, but rather density.
Our UIs should be more than just Excel-but-not-in-Excel!
* Why change to something that's "almost as useful" .. that's a downgrade.
* Pretty is often the enemy of Consistent.
On that second point, it doesn't have to be .. but it can take a great deal more effort to have data presentation that's both creative and consistent and dense.
The domain goals here are rapid navigation of dense infomation across tens of thousands of companies, timespans, portfolios, groupings, comparisons, etc. With a good interface the user quickly finds the desired scope and view and automatically eye tracks to the wanted figures.
It's not an interface for pretty board room presentations (although in an organisation that promotes based on merit in the ditches most senior staff would be familiar with a Bloomberg Board) - it's a daily driver for engine room.
I'm not defending this specific interface, just highlighting what is common to many similar domain tools.