SOunds almost like the opposite sides of the spectrum.
With some exceptions and edge cases (like trading or aviation where you have to see a lot of information at once, density is the product in itself)
I argue that by "good" UI most UI users really mean "well structured and carefully prioritized information that doesn't overwhelm you" (aka "low information density").
It is really hard to find good UI in that sense. Apple is doing okay job in their iOS and macOS UI in general. Modern car makers (some of them at least) reached a pretty good point when a lot of complexity is hidden behind a very intuitive UI.
Btw, Apple was expected to be good at UIs because of its history of _inheriting_ xerox's military UI research achievements.
That's a fair point, and my own earlier example (newspaper-like layout for online news) links through to the source "lite" article ... which is laid out with ample whitespace and no distractions.
Which contrasts to the typical online news article which is littered with advertisements and "Related" links (which are not in fact related), as well as multiple calls-to-action for newsletters, registrations, donations, and all the rest (WaPo, NPR, PBS, and others all come to mind). Not to mention autoplay video and audio, dickbars, etc., etc.
My front page is information dense. Its job is to convey what current breaking news is. It is text-only, partly because incorporating images from upstream is complicated, but mostly because those images convey no useful information.
"Information appropriate" is probably a better overall term, where for survey or multiple-element presentation should have many discrete items, but where detailed presentation focuses on one and only one item, which can be read in depth without distraction.
That said, not having shit that moves in either case is a huge improvement over Web defaults these days.
With some exceptions and edge cases (like trading or aviation where you have to see a lot of information at once, density is the product in itself) I argue that by "good" UI most UI users really mean "well structured and carefully prioritized information that doesn't overwhelm you" (aka "low information density").
It is really hard to find good UI in that sense. Apple is doing okay job in their iOS and macOS UI in general. Modern car makers (some of them at least) reached a pretty good point when a lot of complexity is hidden behind a very intuitive UI.
Btw, Apple was expected to be good at UIs because of its history of _inheriting_ xerox's military UI research achievements.