In the case of Bloomberg, Nielsen says terminal designers made the right choice by allowing users to create screens that are basically huge data dumps featuring row upon row of numbers and text. “The human eye is extremely fast in moving across a screen, which makes all the difference in a world where a second can mean $1 million,” he says.

Still, he sees many improvements to make. Like Malkin, Nielsen points to the use of color, suggesting that dark text on a light background is easier on the eyes than the reverse. (On the Web, Bloomberg has decided to use black text on a white background for its news stories.) Increasing the contrast and using higher-resolution text and graphs would also improve readability.

Bloomberg maintains that it is constantly updating the terminal, as Mike Bloomberg notes in his 1997 autobiography: “While our competitors are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we’re already on prototype version No. 5. By the time our rivals are ready with wires and screws, we are on version No. 10.” But a decentralized process for implementing software updates still caused problems. Programmers and designers could make changes to software independently of one another, creating variations across different pages, says Raquel Tudela, a graphics designer at Bloomberg. To achieve consistency, the company has created a style guide for visual elements such as colors, buttons, and menus.

So far the drab look probably hasn’t hurt Bloomberg’s bottom line. 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. In fact, 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.”