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Comment by spiffytech | Hacker News Reader

I asked a Googler about this years ago when Material Design was new. They told me that the general population has a harder time processing dense information views compared with computer geeks. Many folks find devices easier to use when there's less "going on" on-screen at once. If you bump up padding and margins, you not only reduce total visible information, but also spread out your UI elements, making it easier to visually identify which part of the screen holds the information you're looking for.

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Edit to add: the way it was explained to me, the gap isn't about education or intelligence, but simply that computer geeks have trained for years at the specific skill of interpreting dense computer screens, in a manner and degree that the general population hasn't.

It's odd that the same general population can read news papers and books. New papers are way more dense than books and they enjoy reading all of it.

How much more dense are screens than a newspaper. Even news websites try to cram in as much as they can on as little space as possible yet they are popular among the same audience. Its more about unfamiliar text on screen more than the dense text.

> They told me that the general population has a harder time processing dense information views compared with computer geeks.

The average computer geek probably has functional literacy at college level, even those that don't actually go to college or quit part way.

Meanwhile:

> According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old - about 130 million people - lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

So, a pocket memex, a device born for information managers, is now developed, according to what you write, for people with some allergy to information, and to alienate information managers. Because sales, of course. And what is the option for the information managers?

It is odd that a company so focused on diversity forces everyone to adapt to the information processing capabilities of the stupid. Or maybe not odd at all.

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