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“Simplifying the interface of the terminal would not be accepted by most users because, as ethnographic studies show, they take pride on manipulating Bloomberg’s current “complex” interface. The pain inflicted by blatant UI flaws such as black background color and yellow and orange text is strangely transformed into the rewarding experience of feeling and looking like a hard-core professional.”

— UX Magazine: The Impossible Bloomberg Makeover (via Tanya Rabourn)

A great example of a case where listening to users will not produce the most usable design. We ran into the same phenomenon when I worked on Soundtrack Pro. In many cases we wanted to reinvent how particular audio editings tasks were done, but found editors resistant to anything other than the clunky old Pro Tools ways of doing things.