Summary
UI density is the amount of information an interface can provide over a series of moments. A visually dense software interface puts a lot of stuff on the screen. A. visually sparse interface puts less stuff on a screen. We should aim for the most consistent, meaningful, and useful definition possible.
Information density is a measurable quantity: you simply divide the amount of “data-ink” in a chart by the total amount of ink it takes to print it. Tufte argues that visual elements that don’t strictly communicate data should be eliminated.
In UI, UX, and product design, we make many decisions, consciously and subconsciously, in order to communicate information and ideas. How can we incorporate all of the design decisions in an interface into a more objective, quantitative understanding of density? These questions sparked that led 20th century German psychologists to explore how humans understand and interpret shapes and patterns.
The faster the interface responds to actions and loads new pages or screens, the more dense the UI is. Density should comprise all the actions a user takes in their journey — it should count in space and time. Bloomberg’s Terminal loads screens full of data instantaneously.
For gaps longer than 1 minute, it’s best to let the user leave the page, then notify them when the next action has occurred. The right design can make the waiting time seem shorter than it actually is. The tradeoffs in visual and temporal density make the outcome more valuable.
When the internet was young, companies like Craigslist created value density by aggregating and curating information. Google took a radically different approach: use information gleaned by the internet’s long chains of linked lists. The results speak for themselves: Google went from a $23B valuation in 2004 to being worth over $2T today.
