Kibana 7 Discover UI is *very* cluttered compared to 6 and 5

[jgough]

We've been using Kibana 7 now for a while, however after trying to get used to it I'm afraid that I'm still finding the new Kibana 7 UI very cluttered and clunky in many places

I reported this issue here: https://discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-7-discover-ui-is-very-cluttered-compared-to-6-and-5/189587 but was advised to raise the issue here too.

Compare the Discover UI below from previous versions:

Kibana 5:

Kibana 6:

Kibana 7:

It's not that I'm trying to resist change, there's just a lot more things here to have to look at in v7 - things to click and to have to read and to be understood. I count 14 things to look at for K5 but this is now 22 things to look at. What used to be 4 lines is now 6 lines - introducing more clutter and providing no more functionality at all that I can tell. I want to emphasise that this is not new features added, this is existing features made harder to use. It doesn't look visually appealing at all, it's less user-friendly and more cluttered.

I hope this gets iterated on and we return to a simpler UI that is less taxing to use, especially for novice users.

I almost feel things need to go back to basics - data, visualisations and dashboards. I feel novice use is being dissuaded in favour of adding "stuff" that whilst useful to some alienates many.

Just my thoughts...

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-design

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-app

[snide]

Thanks for your feedback. Kibana certainly has grown from its original roots and taken on more features. As you mention it's a challenge adding them from a design standpoint! Some people use the app in simple fashions as solo maintainers and then others manage it with hundreds of consumers using dozens of the apps all interconnected. It's a tough balance keeping things consistent and tidy.

We're ramping up at taking another look at the Discover app. Likely there's some optimization we can make and we'll keep this in mind.

[timroes]

I’d close this in favor of the meta issue of the Discover redesign: #38646

[dguendisch]

Maybe worth mentioning that this issue is more about the "top header" with its navigational components. So it applies to discover, visualize and dashboard tab, while #38646 seems to focus on the discover UI itself.
(PS: all in all I hear the same feedback in my team: Kibana 7 wastes too much precious space in the top header, some heavy-used features require now more clicking, e.g. disabling or negating filters, new time picker seems to confuse many people ...)