> The far more interesting possibility is that the data suggested that they do what they did, but that the data was wrong.
Agreed, you can even see good UI ideals behind several controversial decisions... large buttons on the start screen (just like enlarged buttons on the ribbon) suggest someone read Fitt's Law. Searching is a task that takes your focus while you type, it seems to deserve a little more screen real estate than the tiny eighth of a screen 7 offers.
Maybe MS designs are evaluated in usability studies by charitable or willing users, but are sort of foisted on the public once shipped, and evaluated much more critically.
Or maybe MS is lumping all of its users into one profile, when there are really so many Windows users, you almost have to break them into clusters of users.
I had a VM running Blue for a while. It was a jarring experience at first, I got used to it, but I didn't immediately run out and buy it. I mostly type to launch, so I never clicked on anything on the start page, but didn't really notice a dive in my workflow, since search was a little better. It was neither as good as its proponents claimed, nor as bad as its detractors made it out to be for me. But maybe that's just my workflow.
Windows is designed for so many audiences, they should really disaggregate their UI from their core. Something that makes Linux incredibly confusing might actually be really necessary for good UI design for this many people.
Agreed, you can even see good UI ideals behind several controversial decisions... large buttons on the start screen (just like enlarged buttons on the ribbon) suggest someone read Fitt's Law. Searching is a task that takes your focus while you type, it seems to deserve a little more screen real estate than the tiny eighth of a screen 7 offers.
Maybe MS designs are evaluated in usability studies by charitable or willing users, but are sort of foisted on the public once shipped, and evaluated much more critically.
Or maybe MS is lumping all of its users into one profile, when there are really so many Windows users, you almost have to break them into clusters of users.
I had a VM running Blue for a while. It was a jarring experience at first, I got used to it, but I didn't immediately run out and buy it. I mostly type to launch, so I never clicked on anything on the start page, but didn't really notice a dive in my workflow, since search was a little better. It was neither as good as its proponents claimed, nor as bad as its detractors made it out to be for me. But maybe that's just my workflow.
Windows is designed for so many audiences, they should really disaggregate their UI from their core. Something that makes Linux incredibly confusing might actually be really necessary for good UI design for this many people.