Big Surprise: Windows Isn´t a Model for Usability
June 25th, 2008
| Categories: General, Humor, Open Source, Usability
More examples for why we shouldn´t be looking towards Windows for examples of ¨good usability¨. It seems like on his way out of Microsoft, Bill Gates had a few things to say on Windows usability.
This is a pretty frequent scenario on how usability gets done in a company. Someone high up can´t find something, gets frustrated, and approves a huge pile of usability funding to fix his problem. Several of my recent clients have come to me because of a similar ¨event¨. I can´t really complain since they pay my bills, but it makes me feel good when there are open source projects out there actively trying to improve usability before users complain.
This sounds like our software requirements for our most recent project: plotting should work like . No improvements, just the same. What’s the point of writing new software if it doesn’t make an improvement?
Can’t seem to follow the link, can you repost it?
celeste, there seems to be a problem with your link. it should point to:
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp
should work like “previous product” above (used < and > oops)
Link is fixed. Sorry about that, I just switched to an internationalized keyboard and didn’t notice WordPress didn’t convert the fancy quotes.
The email was from January 15, 2003, so it’s not something that he wrote “on his way out”. It’s more like “stuff I should have fixed when I was in the position to do so”.
Some freedom advocates may gloat over stuff like this, but I feel sorry for those who aren’t in a position to avoid the Microsoft runaround. I just hope they get paid by the hour.
I never thought that Windows was a model on usability - they don’t even have a standard HIG for one (or at least I can never find it!).
congrats, aseigo has given up on the KDE community because of people like you and decided to stop all participation and that includes closing his own blog.
@jimcooncat: Right on, I didn´t notice the email date. Thanks for the clarification.
@congrats: You float my ego if you really think I had anything to do with Aaron´s decision to stop feeding trolls and get more work done.
As a point of observation, a lot of software gets written because it is in the “shareholder’s interest” in someone’s mind, rarely the mind of the person writing the software to spec.
Open Source is started mostly by people who are trying to get something specific done for themselves. At that point usability isn’t at the forefront of their mind either. It’s when someone else says You know I need something that does this and the developer says ‘Oh, I wrote something like that, but it’s not very user friendly.’ that usability even enters the equation. At that point people start working on making it more usable.
The person working to the “shareholder’s interest” may very well have ideas on how to make the product easier to use, or more flexible, but often doesn’t have the authority to even make a suggestion that will get looked at.
It would not surprise me if there were a lot of comments in some of the proprietary source code that read something along the lines of “This is a really stupid way to do this, we should have done ‘x’ and it would have been faster, and more usable.”
Well, more likely in the developer’s non-merged comments any way. Might tend to get one fired as being insubordinate in some companies.
Windows often gets used as a model for usability because that is what users are familiar with, but it is important not to mistake familiarity for usability.
Humans are very adaptable and can learn to be very productive with some quite dreadful UI’s.
Of course you shouldn’t ignore familiarity: all things being equal, go with the familiar — but if that is lousy interface, don’t be afraid to change it.
@JohnyG: Your absolutely correct about familiarity, but it is important to not confuse it with usability. What works might only be “good” because people have gotten used to it and learned out to overcome presented challenges — not always because it is the best design.
I remember Firefox getting mixed reviews when they decided to put close buttons on individual tabs. A lot of users didn’t like it because it was just different. Now a lot of those same users don’t notice now that they’ve gotten used to it.
The same thing happened when Dolphin was introduced. KDE users were so used to using Konqueror as a file manager, they didn’t give Dolphin a chance. Now that it has been part of the environment for a while, a lot of those users have worked with it enough to get used to it.
Learning is something a lot of people forget about. A reasonable amount of learning (and even training) can be acceptable.
LOL, LMAO….Windows has never been an easy to use “HEY IT WORKS” operating system. But I will tell you one thing for sure. If Ubuntu came out at the same time windows did, it would be a totally different story today as far as desktop dominince.
Bill has described everything that others find frustrating about Windows today, and the article itself is wrong. No, things haven’t got any better in five years. You still get unbelievably esoteric things in Add/Remove programmes from updates regarding Windows hotfixes with ridiculous numbers. There is no clue whatsoever what it does, why it is there and no indication of what effect there will be if it is removed. There is also no dependencies system there to tell you what it depends on either and to warn you of the effects.
The whole rant on the veritable panoply of dependencies that are brought down, just to get one piece of software, is quite funny and very familiar. You need WM9, some updates to Windows Update itself…….. The MSDN lunatics have totally taken over. This was hilarious:
“I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root certificate message?)”
They still don’t learn either. They still want you to download a pointless dependency just to get one application:
“Gates noted that Microsoft plans to include Movie Maker as part of Windows Live, so people will get the program *when they download that online package*.”
At least he tries out things like that, rather than some execs who don’t have a clue what products they sell or even what their website address is. He’s just as frustrated as the rest of us about a great many things. Mind you, the comments at the bottom of that article from various people are even funnier.