Terminally Ugly
Condé Nast Portfolio reports this week on the venerable Bloomberg Terminal Design
"...people who rely on Bloomberg’s data terminals have to deal with an interface that’s a throwback to MS-DOS."
However, Bruce Nussbaum at BusinessWeek named the Antenna Designed terminal one of the Best Product Designs back in 2004, quoting:
"It has a dual-screen display plus a keyboard with a fingerprint scanner for access to proprietary analytic software, customized keys and speakers, and a microphone for 'squawking.'"
Not much commentary on the application interface screens themselves, other than the terminal is a "dual-screen", however most traders these days have 3 or 4-screen (or more) setups.
"...company executives see the Bloomberg terminal’s unique presentation as a status symbol and a selling point."
“We have to be religiously consistent” to satisfy users who become attached to terminal’s look and feel, says Bloomberg chief executive Lex Fenwick. “You can see a Bloomberg from a mile away.”
This is true. You do need to tread carefully when fiddling with interfaces that customers have made part of their routines. Nobody wants a "who moved my cheese?" incident, yet if you want to attract new mice to your mousetrap, you need to continually innovate.
Is there potential here for a new player in the terminal game with an eye for better interface design?
"The competition—terminals from Thomson and Reuters (which Thomson just agreed to buy)—isn’t any prettier to look at. So Bloomberg isn’t looking to do a major overhaul of its terminals’ graphic design anytime soon."
Three top design firms, IDEO, thehappycorp and Ziba Design tried their hand at redesigning the Bloomberg interface. IDEO's clean, white background approach is my pick.
