As for months/years or training - sure, there maybe (or maybe not even training in the tool per se, but more like general education; you need to know what the data shown actually means). But in a typical tool, 10 seconds or even 5 minutes of training won't kill anyone and would vastly improve efficiency. Want a proof? Video games. Each one has a custom, specific UI. RTS games have so many stuff on screen that they often have tutorials and in-game help. And 8-year-olds have zero problems with understanding all that in under 5 minutes. Outside of gamedev, people seem to have forgotten the concept of introduction, tips and tutorials.
Please backtrack a minute: What we're trying to debunk is that "Whitespace is always bad". The rant you're going into, here, is that some tools are oversimplified or don't give you immediate access to functions you need. That's the tool not doing its job - it's bad UX. Nobody will argue against that.
It also has nothing to do with whitespace.
> Outside of gamedev, people seem to have forgotten the concept of introduction, tips and tutorials.
SMB 1-1 is often praised as having outstanding video game level design. One of the reasons is exactly because it doesn't use "tips and tutorials". It intuitively teaches you to run towards the right, to jump, how to kill enemies and discover secrets without ever popping a tooltip on the screen. Not that those are always bad, mind you, but intuitiveness is game design by excellence.
> But you really don't, though.
No, I really do, you know. Sure, if there's a logical structure in information, you'd do well to highlight it - as well as any relative relevance of pieces of info (IFF you know what task I'm solving). But I'm not 3 y.o. anymore, I can handle more than 5 lines of text on a page. Please don't hide information from me just because you think it's not relevant to the most basic use case.
I'm strongly with Tufte on this one. Presenting information is about dumping it all on the person with minimum artsy bullshit, and helping the viewer make sense of it efficiently. Modern UX paradigms however go in the completely opposite direction - hide everything, remove features, decrease information density.
There's a reason NASA mission control look like this:
http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-090313a-lg.jpg
and not this:
https://i.imgur.com/4CqzSb4.png
even though the latter is exactly what modern UX guidelines would call for.
If you want to build tools to help people solve problems efficiently, make tools. If you want to make a safe-for-work mental masturbation art piece, which is what most mainstream UX guidelines boil down to, then by all means. I just don't want to have it anywhere near me when I have problems to solve.
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> intuitive interfaces are for kids
There's only one intuitive interface in the world, and that's the nipple. Everything else is learned.