8 ms·

I'm fascinated by how many of the things they identified as helpful to new users were later reverted. Looking at my Windows 10 desktop all of the work they did

I'm fascinated by how many of the things they identified as helpful to new users were later reverted. Looking at my Windows 10 desktop all of the work they did to find a solution where all users identified a program as "running" has been undone - it's back to icons with only a subtle indicator to distinguish between those that represent shortcuts and those that represent a running program. The Start Menu is now assumed knowledge that the furthest left icon on the taskbar is "special" and does something different to all the other shortcuts. I guess the modern equivalent of "Start" is "Type here to search" in the Cortana bar but that's not a great experience for new users. We all know the propensity for it to decide to search Bing at the slightest provocation but if you try some natural "never used a computer before" things like searching for "power off" or "shut down" you get some quite unhelpful results. (The former wants me to set up a power plan, the latter directs me to Add or Remove Programs) It feels like computer use is assumed knowledge in 2019 - that everyone who buys a computer already knows what the Windows logo represents, how minimising and overlapping works, what the difference between an app icon and a notification tray icon is, and so on. Microsoft no longer feel the need to design so much for people buying their first ever family computer, having never even used one before. Probably true in the first world, but I wonder if this holds out globally?

vbezhenar 7y ago
Similar thing happened in Apple with iOS 7. Before they used skeuomorphic design using realistic images to represent UI which was supposed to help people using computing devices first time. E.g. leather notepad to represent reminders application, 3D buttons, etc. They abandoned this design paradigm and switched to minimalist one probably because most of their users became computer-literate and did not need those analogues to understand UI.
- goalieca 7y ago
  I think going with a simple icon is far better. Consider the design of symbols such as corrosive or the street is icy, or s-curve coming up ahead. They do not look like real-world images but they are so wonderfully intuitive. We do not need to stare at the detail to understand what it is. Likewise, the new icons are brilliant. The reminders app has basically a list. Music is a musical note, etc. The only one that really sucks is "photos". It looks more like a colour wheel.
  - kube-system 7y ago
    I still get a kick out of the clock icon.
chungus_khan 7y ago
In my experience it is definitely a problem that comes up a lot introducing Windows 10 to people who have never used a computer before. They don't know what is running and what isn't, they don't know which window is focused if there are several on screen at once, they are afraid to poke around in the start menu in a way they weren't when it was simpler and clearer, and in general don't understand the meanings of icons and menus that used to be properly labeled. Windows 95 was a lot more clear and discoverable for someone who had never used a graphical computer.
- dspillett 7y ago
  > ... people who have never used a computer before. They don't know which window is focused if there are several on screen at once This isn't just a problem for beginners: I'm old hat and I sometimes can't tell what Windows 10 has given focus to at times when I have several things on the go, especially over two or more screens where windows overlapping isn't the obvious go-to clue. The distinction between focused and not is sometimes so close to non-existent it might as well be completely non-existent (like the titlebar text+icons being a slightly different shade of grey), and it varies from app to app (even amongst Microsoft's output) so there is not one set visual cue to follow. It definitely used to be better than this, including in Windows land. When I get around to it (so probably never!) I intend to write a little tool that scans for the top-most window and draws a bright border around/over it somehow. I know this is possible (and probably not difficult) as I did some similar hacky window decorating back in the Win2K days[‡], but I've been almost entirely a database+infrastructure fellow for more than a decade and my desktop dev knowledge has rotted terribly. [†] an always-on-top window positioned so it is a line across the top of the focused window would do, four such objects, one for each side, would be the easy hacky way to achieve a border, a single drawing surface with transparency and mouse click-through would be cleaner but with my current skillset more faf working out the relevant API jiggery-pokery or finding a library that wraps that nicely already [‡] Using Delphi. Anyone else remember that? Does it still exist in a similar form?
  - PsylentKnight 7y ago
    In Settings > Colors you can choose an accent color and turn on the "Title bars and windows borders" option - I think that would give you exactly what you want.
dmos62 7y ago
As much as I dislike the general Windows UX, which is largely because I can't run a custom window-manager, I feel like I'm the only person that thinks Windows 10 is a big improvement. Maybe we don't have to look at it as a subjective like/dislike type of thing and just say that for me it's an improvement. I use the classic non-contracted-to-an-icon task-bar, in the small variant. That's just to say that my task-bar looks and feels the same as it would on Windows 95. The big improvement for me is the start screen. I use the fullscreen start-menu (I call it screen since it's fullscreen), where I put the shortcuts I want easy access to. It was introduced in Windows 8, but later the defaults were reverted to a 95-style mini-menu. I have desktop disabled (desktop icons, more specifically), because I find that a desktop has a negative effect on organization, so all my icons are in the fullscreen start. When I need a shortcut that's not pinned to my start, Win-S pops up the search dialog. Apart from bloat, I'm pretty content with this UI.
- enriquto 7y ago
  you could certainly run a custom window manager in win95. That's what I did during the best years of my life. No idea if with the windowses of today is still possible.
  - deaddodo 7y ago
    Sure, people still do it: https://www.reddit.com/r/desktops/comments/52402v/windows_10_x64_with_bbzero/ https://www.reddit.com/r/desktops/comments/52402v/windows_10... It's just less common.
    - dmos62 7y ago
      I tried to google around, but info was very thin. The bbzero github repo was last updated 4-5 years ago. Is this something that's bolted on top of the current WM, or is it a veritable replacement, in that the vanilla WM is unloaded and doesn't use resources? The concensus, whether correct or not, is that Windows WM is tightly coupled with the rest of the system.
      - 7y ago
whalesalad 7y ago
Win10 is particularly bad. I have recently started to maintain some Windows infrastructure and have been simulating a new deployment with Server 19, Win 10 clients, Win 7 clients, etc... and the start menu on modern Windows is absolutely unbearable. That combined with the constant full screen takeover modals for basic permissions, and the default icon collapse task bar ... it’s definitely a high bar for a new user.
- uryga 7y ago
  you can change the way permission modals display to make them a pop-up window w/o the fullscreen! makes them much less jarring
  - timw4mail 7y ago
    How?
    - uryga 7y ago
      when a permissions popup appears, click "More details" -> "Change when these notifications appear", then take the slider down one step, to "Notify me [...] (do not dim my desktop)". that's on Windows 10 though, not sure if it's possible on older versions
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
Don't forget that the start menu has regressed into a CLI because it is too ponderous to find anything by graphical navigation. Regressed, because typed querys take seconds to complete.
- fortran77 7y ago
  On both Mac and windows, I start programs by typing the first few letters in the search box and clicking.
  - sharatvir 7y ago
    About 25% of the time on Windows, this takes me to an internet search.
- amyjess 7y ago
  So pretty much the only thing I boot into Windows for nowadays is to play FF14. My routine is always the same: log in, open Chrome if it didn't open already (happens 50% of the time), and then open the start menu, type fi, and click the first icon that appears.
- Timberwolf 7y ago
  I loved this feature in Windows 7, because all it did there was an exact substring match over the items in the Start menu. As a result, it was instant. The Windows 10 one where it's trying to do a Bing search, look through the Microsoft Store for apps to buy and who knows what else is... I can see what they're trying to do, but if you have 24 years of ingrained habit of only using Start to launch programs it's annoying having the feature made so CPU and disk intensive to add options you don't use. At least Microsoft have put a lot of work into improving it. Using some of the early iterations on a slow spinning-rust laptop would frequently result in the process searching your installed programs timing out, leaving only the web search option.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Nondeterministic keyboard search is infuriating.
swiley 7y ago
Man, if you assume knowledge and expect people to type what they want why not just use a decent CLI?
sedatk 7y ago
They reverted some of the things because the paradigms around them have changed, such as "running applications". That paradigm is dead on iOS and Android and is slowly dying on desktop operating systems too. We're getting over the times when we have to carefully consider which apps we should be running to conserve memory, CPU etc. That's not something users should be thinking about. Modern equivalent of the Start Menu is still the start menu. When you click on it, it shows a list of applications available on the system. Shut down is also the nearest available option there. So, I disagree with your sentiment that Windows 10 has rolled back good ideas. Windows 10 is simply the best Windows to date ever in all aspects.
- xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
  The problem is that it is worse. The system begins guessing what users want, and that means the system will be wrong. It often is. For example, on my Pixel 3, Spotify is terminated if I open the camera app around 80% of the time. Is it a resource issue? Who knows! The system gives me no insight. Is this what users really want? I'm very doubtful.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > Windows 10 is simply the best Windows to date ever in all aspects. Wow. My opinion is very, very different. The best Windows to date, in my opinion, in Win 7. I even consider Win 95 to be better than Win 10.
- Asooka 7y ago
  But have there been long and deep usability studies with users from all ages and experiences to determine if this is the most comfortable and easiest to use system? Or did Steve Jobs go on stage, show the iPhone tailored to his preferences and usage style and then everyone copied that? Because I kind of feel like the systems you describe are doing little more than cargo-cult programming mixed with envy for whatever is "cool" at the time.
pdonis 7y ago
I think one key factor is that, whereas this article talks about making Windows easy for home users being a priority because of the huge untapped market there at the time, home users are no longer a real concern of MS: they make their real money from large corporate deployments of tens or hundreds of thousands of copies of Windows, not from individuals. MS basically assumes that, once everyone is using a Windows computer at work, they will have a Windows computer at home as well, and that they will learn how to use it at work because they will have to, and their employer will train them as needed to be able to accomplish work tasks, which will then give them enough basic knowledge to use their home computer. In other words, MS has outsourced the job of training people how to use computers to their corporate customers, so their design process no longer worries about it.
fludlight 7y ago
The main issue is organizational incentives. Microsoft has thousands of employees in the windows division who need to justify their jobs by constantly changing things. They call this innovation but it’s really just busywork to minimize the chance that they get fired or their boss’s boss’s boss loses clout in the company. The major innovations in windows over the past 20 years have been increased stability, an App Store, better security, easier control in corporate deployments, and some cloud and local backup features, the rest were mostly unnecessary.
mackrevinack 7y ago
press the "start" button to stop your computer? i really doubt this was this helpful to new users. it does make sense for most other things though, like launching programs and maybe even the restart option, but for the shutting down option its fairly illogical so its strange that it took them so long to switch to an icon instead.
- Asooka 7y ago
  I have so far only seen computer nerds complain that "shutdown" is under "start". Regular users have no problem starting the shutdown process.

vbezhenar 7y ago

Similar thing happened in Apple with iOS 7. Before they used skeuomorphic design using realistic images to represent UI which was supposed to help people using computing devices first time. E.g. leather notepad to represent reminders application, 3D buttons, etc. They abandoned this design paradigm and switched to minimalist one probably because most of their users became computer-literate and did not need those analogues to understand UI.

goalieca 7y ago
I think going with a simple icon is far better. Consider the design of symbols such as corrosive or the street is icy, or s-curve coming up ahead. They do not look like real-world images but they are so wonderfully intuitive. We do not need to stare at the detail to understand what it is. Likewise, the new icons are brilliant. The reminders app has basically a list. Music is a musical note, etc. The only one that really sucks is "photos". It looks more like a colour wheel.
- kube-system 7y ago
  I still get a kick out of the clock icon.

chungus_khan 7y ago

In my experience it is definitely a problem that comes up a lot introducing Windows 10 to people who have never used a computer before. They don't know what is running and what isn't, they don't know which window is focused if there are several on screen at once, they are afraid to poke around in the start menu in a way they weren't when it was simpler and clearer, and in general don't understand the meanings of icons and menus that used to be properly labeled. Windows 95 was a lot more clear and discoverable for someone who had never used a graphical computer.

dspillett 7y ago
> ... people who have never used a computer before. They don't know which window is focused if there are several on screen at once This isn't just a problem for beginners: I'm old hat and I sometimes can't tell what Windows 10 has given focus to at times when I have several things on the go, especially over two or more screens where windows overlapping isn't the obvious go-to clue. The distinction between focused and not is sometimes so close to non-existent it might as well be completely non-existent (like the titlebar text+icons being a slightly different shade of grey), and it varies from app to app (even amongst Microsoft's output) so there is not one set visual cue to follow. It definitely used to be better than this, including in Windows land. When I get around to it (so probably never!) I intend to write a little tool that scans for the top-most window and draws a bright border around/over it somehow. I know this is possible (and probably not difficult) as I did some similar hacky window decorating back in the Win2K days[‡], but I've been almost entirely a database+infrastructure fellow for more than a decade and my desktop dev knowledge has rotted terribly. [†] an always-on-top window positioned so it is a line across the top of the focused window would do, four such objects, one for each side, would be the easy hacky way to achieve a border, a single drawing surface with transparency and mouse click-through would be cleaner but with my current skillset more faf working out the relevant API jiggery-pokery or finding a library that wraps that nicely already [‡] Using Delphi. Anyone else remember that? Does it still exist in a similar form?
- PsylentKnight 7y ago
  In Settings > Colors you can choose an accent color and turn on the "Title bars and windows borders" option - I think that would give you exactly what you want.

dmos62 7y ago

As much as I dislike the general Windows UX, which is largely because I can't run a custom window-manager, I feel like I'm the only person that thinks Windows 10 is a big improvement. Maybe we don't have to look at it as a subjective like/dislike type of thing and just say that for me it's an improvement. I use the classic non-contracted-to-an-icon task-bar, in the small variant. That's just to say that my task-bar looks and feels the same as it would on Windows 95. The big improvement for me is the start screen. I use the fullscreen start-menu (I call it screen since it's fullscreen), where I put the shortcuts I want easy access to. It was introduced in Windows 8, but later the defaults were reverted to a 95-style mini-menu. I have desktop disabled (desktop icons, more specifically), because I find that a desktop has a negative effect on organization, so all my icons are in the fullscreen start. When I need a shortcut that's not pinned to my start, Win-S pops up the search dialog. Apart from bloat, I'm pretty content with this UI.

enriquto 7y ago
you could certainly run a custom window manager in win95. That's what I did during the best years of my life. No idea if with the windowses of today is still possible.
- deaddodo 7y ago
  Sure, people still do it: https://www.reddit.com/r/desktops/comments/52402v/windows_10_x64_with_bbzero/ https://www.reddit.com/r/desktops/comments/52402v/windows_10... It's just less common.
  - dmos62 7y ago
    I tried to google around, but info was very thin. The bbzero github repo was last updated 4-5 years ago. Is this something that's bolted on top of the current WM, or is it a veritable replacement, in that the vanilla WM is unloaded and doesn't use resources? The concensus, whether correct or not, is that Windows WM is tightly coupled with the rest of the system.
    - 7y ago

whalesalad 7y ago

Win10 is particularly bad. I have recently started to maintain some Windows infrastructure and have been simulating a new deployment with Server 19, Win 10 clients, Win 7 clients, etc... and the start menu on modern Windows is absolutely unbearable. That combined with the constant full screen takeover modals for basic permissions, and the default icon collapse task bar ... it’s definitely a high bar for a new user.

uryga 7y ago
you can change the way permission modals display to make them a pop-up window w/o the fullscreen! makes them much less jarring
- timw4mail 7y ago
  How?
  - uryga 7y ago
    when a permissions popup appears, click "More details" -> "Change when these notifications appear", then take the slider down one step, to "Notify me [...] (do not dim my desktop)". that's on Windows 10 though, not sure if it's possible on older versions

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

Don't forget that the start menu has regressed into a CLI because it is too ponderous to find anything by graphical navigation. Regressed, because typed querys take seconds to complete.

fortran77 7y ago
On both Mac and windows, I start programs by typing the first few letters in the search box and clicking.
- sharatvir 7y ago
  About 25% of the time on Windows, this takes me to an internet search.
amyjess 7y ago
So pretty much the only thing I boot into Windows for nowadays is to play FF14. My routine is always the same: log in, open Chrome if it didn't open already (happens 50% of the time), and then open the start menu, type fi, and click the first icon that appears.
Timberwolf 7y ago
I loved this feature in Windows 7, because all it did there was an exact substring match over the items in the Start menu. As a result, it was instant. The Windows 10 one where it's trying to do a Bing search, look through the Microsoft Store for apps to buy and who knows what else is... I can see what they're trying to do, but if you have 24 years of ingrained habit of only using Start to launch programs it's annoying having the feature made so CPU and disk intensive to add options you don't use. At least Microsoft have put a lot of work into improving it. Using some of the early iterations on a slow spinning-rust laptop would frequently result in the process searching your installed programs timing out, leaving only the web search option.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Nondeterministic keyboard search is infuriating.

swiley 7y ago

Man, if you assume knowledge and expect people to type what they want why not just use a decent CLI?

sedatk 7y ago

They reverted some of the things because the paradigms around them have changed, such as "running applications". That paradigm is dead on iOS and Android and is slowly dying on desktop operating systems too. We're getting over the times when we have to carefully consider which apps we should be running to conserve memory, CPU etc. That's not something users should be thinking about. Modern equivalent of the Start Menu is still the start menu. When you click on it, it shows a list of applications available on the system. Shut down is also the nearest available option there. So, I disagree with your sentiment that Windows 10 has rolled back good ideas. Windows 10 is simply the best Windows to date ever in all aspects.

xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
The problem is that it is worse. The system begins guessing what users want, and that means the system will be wrong. It often is. For example, on my Pixel 3, Spotify is terminated if I open the camera app around 80% of the time. Is it a resource issue? Who knows! The system gives me no insight. Is this what users really want? I'm very doubtful.
JohnFen 7y ago
> Windows 10 is simply the best Windows to date ever in all aspects. Wow. My opinion is very, very different. The best Windows to date, in my opinion, in Win 7. I even consider Win 95 to be better than Win 10.
Asooka 7y ago
But have there been long and deep usability studies with users from all ages and experiences to determine if this is the most comfortable and easiest to use system? Or did Steve Jobs go on stage, show the iPhone tailored to his preferences and usage style and then everyone copied that? Because I kind of feel like the systems you describe are doing little more than cargo-cult programming mixed with envy for whatever is "cool" at the time.

pdonis 7y ago

I think one key factor is that, whereas this article talks about making Windows easy for home users being a priority because of the huge untapped market there at the time, home users are no longer a real concern of MS: they make their real money from large corporate deployments of tens or hundreds of thousands of copies of Windows, not from individuals. MS basically assumes that, once everyone is using a Windows computer at work, they will have a Windows computer at home as well, and that they will learn how to use it at work because they will have to, and their employer will train them as needed to be able to accomplish work tasks, which will then give them enough basic knowledge to use their home computer. In other words, MS has outsourced the job of training people how to use computers to their corporate customers, so their design process no longer worries about it.

fludlight 7y ago

The main issue is organizational incentives. Microsoft has thousands of employees in the windows division who need to justify their jobs by constantly changing things. They call this innovation but it’s really just busywork to minimize the chance that they get fired or their boss’s boss’s boss loses clout in the company. The major innovations in windows over the past 20 years have been increased stability, an App Store, better security, easier control in corporate deployments, and some cloud and local backup features, the rest were mostly unnecessary.

mackrevinack 7y ago

press the "start" button to stop your computer? i really doubt this was this helpful to new users. it does make sense for most other things though, like launching programs and maybe even the restart option, but for the shutting down option its fairly illogical so its strange that it took them so long to switch to an icon instead.

Asooka 7y ago
I have so far only seen computer nerds complain that "shutdown" is under "start". Regular users have no problem starting the shutdown process.