this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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Information density MUST be suitable for humans. Usability and productivity both have nothing in common with amount of clicking and scrolling required.
Just imagine making your font size something about 5px. And 1.0 as a line height. Sounds good, isn't it? There ia so much information displayed on the screen.
If you need less information on screen, they invented a great thing for that in the 90s: resizable windows. And later, HiDPI-aware interface scaling.
That is the right way to control information density. The user can control both of these however they like and set it to whatever they work best with, and it applies across the system. You can’t do that with usually custom written interfaces that insist on putting like two lines of text worth of whitespace between every UI element.
Agree. But we could say tthe same thing in the opposite direction: if you need more information on your screen, just use scaling and font settings :)
Actually I AM that guy with a small font size and super-packed density. The more information on the screen, the faster I can take it in at a glance and find what I need. Sorry your brain doesn't work that way, but less clicking and scrolling absolutely does affect my productivity and my idea of usability. For example, I find it highly annoying when a website changes to a larger spacing on a drop-down list and suddenly something I used to be able to immediately click on now requires me to scroll down several times to find the option I want. I'm not sure how that's supposed to increase usability.
That's great. And if something is comfortable for you to use, it doesn't mean it would be comfortable for the majority of other people.
Maybe you use large screen(s). Maybe your information is not important and/or the interface doesn't require actions. Context matters.
As a user of 13-inch 2560x1600p screen, I definitely can say that apps need more whitespace to be usable. I've also been using 2 monitors 27-inch each some time ago. And yes, such a configuration allows for a greater density of information on the screen.
That's why I say (again): information density must be comfortable for humans. In their contexts of course.