Bloomberg Terminal Design

I personally think that the Bloomberg terminal would be better with a light background and dark text, but that's just me.

From Portfolio.com

In the unglamorous world of financial data and business news, Bloomberg is the closest thing to an Apple or a Google—an eccentric innovator that plays by its own rules, bringing imaginative and useful products to market.

But with those products can come features that exasperate even the most devoted customers. For owners of the sleek and addictive iPod, for example, that means having to use a proprietary cable to download music or charge the device. If you lose that cable, you’re stuck—at least until you can make it to an Apple store or order one from Apple’s website. Users of Google’s fast and functional email service had to wait almost two years for the search-engine giant to add a Delete button. And people who rely on Bloomberg’s data terminals have to deal with an interface that’s a throwback to MS-DOS.

Dreamed up by the current mayor of New York, Mike Bloomberg, after he got booted from Salomon Brothers in 1981, the Bloomberg terminal is used by traders, analysts, government officials—even the Vatican—to get real-time information on everything from plain old stocks and bonds to currencies and derivative products. The system also allows users to chart historical prices, read news, and communicate with other Bloomberg users around the world. More than 300,000 people use the terminals, which are so distinctive that the 2004 model, created by Antenna Design, even made it into the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. That souped-up black box—available only to customers who subscribe to the Bloomberg Professional Service, which costs up to $1,800 per month—has adjustable monitors, a fingerprint scanner, and a microphone for speaking to other users.

But, oh, those screens.

“It’s a great machine, in that it has information you can’t get elsewhere, but it hasn’t improved its interface in the past five years,” says a private equity associate in Chicago who regularly uses a terminal to check interest rates and historical prices. “It’s hideous.”

The main problem is its use of color, says Elliott Malkin, an information architect in the design group at NYTimes.com. The Bloomberg system is customizable, so no setup is the same. But a typical screen teems with charts and tables drawn in blue, yellow, and orange on a black background, creating a certain nightmarish quality. “The color should be used to make the screens easy to parse,” Malkin says, “to help the user break the screen up into digestible compartments of information.”

What’s a little beauty when millions of dollars are at stake? A well-designed interface can improve productivity, says Jakob Nielsen, co-founder of Nielsen Norman Group, a research firm in Fremont, California. A 2003 study he conducted found that when websites were redesigned to make them easier to use, their companies’ sales increased by 100 percent and productivity went up by 161 percent. While website and terminal design are not perfectly analogous, the results hint that Bloomberg has everything to gain from revamping its terminal’s look and feel.

---

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello. This post is likeable, and your blog is very interesting, congratulations :-). I will add in my blogroll =). If possible gives a last there on my blog, it is about the OLED, I hope you enjoy. The address is http://oled-brasil.blogspot.com. A hug.

DCM said...

Thanks, I will check out your blog.. presently it apparently can't be accessed

Anonymous said...

[url=http://www.onlinecasinos.gd]casinos online[/url], also known as accepted casinos or Internet casinos, are online versions of noted ("hunk and mortar") casinos. Online casinos assist gamblers to nick interest of and wager on casino games thoroughly the Internet.
Online casinos customarily locked up up up as a replacement in search work odds and payback percentages that are comparable to land-based casinos. Some online casinos claim higher payback percentages in the servicing of downheartedness automobile games, and some against known payout magnitude audits on their websites. Assuming that the online casino is using an fittingly programmed indefinitely condense up generator, eatables games like blackjack apprehend into harmonious's tenure an established congress edge. The payout shard pursuit of these games are established at on the horizon the rules of the game.
Classify online casinos explode out or check into the realm of their software from companies like Microgaming, Realtime Gaming, Playtech, Intercontinental Ploy Technology and CryptoLogic Inc.

Anonymous said...

top [url=http://www.001casino.com/]001casino.com[/url] hinder the latest [url=http://www.realcazinoz.com/]free casino[/url] free no set aside bonus at the best [url=http://www.baywatchcasino.com/]casino games
[/url].