What would you change (first) about Windows' look and feel?
Summary: If you were hired by Microsoft to make the Windows experience less annoying, what would be on your to-do list?
If you were hired by Microsoft to make the Windows experience less annoying, what would be on your to-do list?
Mark Hamburg, the Adobe Photoshop/Lightroom guru recently hired by Microsoft, is tasked with figuring out how to improve the way Microsoft's operating system works.
Hamburg didn't recently join Microsoft to work on SmartFlow, Microsoft's alleged competitor to Lightroom, as I guessed yesterday. Instead, he's working on future OS interface concepts, according to a posting on the ProPhotoHome blog that a reader forwarded to me. According to the post:
"Mark was invited by David Vaskevitch to come lead a team working on the future of OS User Experience at Microsoft.
"This is the way Mark phrased it:
"Now, given that I find the current Windows experience really annoying and yet I keep having to deal with it, this opportunity was a little too interesting to turn down. I can’t imagine doing serious imaging anywhere other than Adobe, but, I needed to do something other than imaging for a while."
This begs the question, what, exactly, is Vaskevitch working on? Vaskevitch is a Senior Vice President and Chief Technical Officer at Microsoft, who has been working with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates "to develop a focused and unified strategy and architecture for future Microsoft platforms." Vaskevitch is also quite the digital-photography buff.
Given Vaskevitch's charter is to focus on the future, it's not a complete given that Hamburg will be focused on improving Windows. Windows is Microsoft's one and only operating system today. (Windows Mobile, based on Windows CE, isn't technically "Windows," but for all intents and purposes, it is still is part of the Windows family.)
However, there has been scuttlebutt around rumored Microsoft efforts to build a new operating system that isn't Windows at its core. And is Windows Live or virtualized Windows still "Windows"? Maybe, maybe not.
"User experience" doesn't translate exactly to "user interface." It's also about the applications which customers use to achieve a task. But it's more UI than anything else.
So if you were to provide Hamburg with a SHORT list of suggestions as to what you'd like to see changed in the Windows UI, where would you start?
Update: News.com's Stephen Shankland has additional speculation on what Hamburg might bring to the Windows UI table.
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Talkback
my list
Re: My list
Office 2007
My take on their change was that when people use tools to get work done, they don't like you changing the tools for no good reason. Just picture if there was only one company that made hammers and they decided that the next version of the hammer should put the metal head in the middle of the wooden shaft. How many pissed-off carpenters would there be? Would they go back to using their previous hammers and throw the new ones away?
Office 2007
If your wife's company's workers just gave it a chance I think they would agree.
It's hard to make improvements without changing anything. Office 2003 was basically the same as 98, so taking nine years was way too long in the first place.
Oh...and OneNote is fantastic, it's a shame they didn't have something like that 10 years ago when I was in undergrad.
The sensible thing to do...
look and feel is not what should change about software
car companies have it figured out...
theres pickup trucks, sedans, mini's etc. etc..
but with software... your forcing everyone to buy the same model car.
it doesnt work for everyone.
i like 2003 better myself. it does everything...
REALLY... it does.
Too much functionality breaks simple UI metaphores
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/tags/Why+the+New+UI_3F00_/default.aspx for why they decided to do the new interface.
Office 2007
I've a different experience.
There were of course some percentage who "hated" it, but could never come up with a good reason for. I actually had one lady tell me should couldn't even figure out how to close it down.... pointing out the close button didn't move and is provided by windows, not the app wouldn't sway her opinion.
Office 2007
Once you start designing documents, or use Office for more technical layout, design, and use features of Office for precise customizing, finding what you need can be ackward and frustrating.
For instance try custom formatting a table, with 2003, it was a breeze to create and format with the table bar, with 2007 you have to go back and forth from several ribbons to get the same work done. Also, some commands seem to be orphaned, and instead of having more, smaller strips, they are just stuck into Page Layout or other odd strips.
Keyboard shortcuts
You're saying that people can't adjust to new things?
That sounds kinda sad to me.
Like many users have said, it's been of a learning curve, but if you'd actually put some effort, you'd find it's all pretty logical.
Besides, MOST of the common commands of any word processor, appears right under Home tab when you launch Word. If you cannot look at the icon and identify what it does (like you would have done for previous versions), then there's something wrong with you.
There's also this brand new add-on from the Office team, that lets users search for commands from a search box, if they're having that much trouble.
http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands/Pages/default.aspx
Laziness
For example, "Insert picture" used to be in the Insert menu, now its on the Insert tab. Wow, that was a hard one to grasp.
Not necessarily lazy.
There's an old saying that I try to follow - If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
But it is broken
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/tags/Why+the+New+UI_3F00_/default.aspx
Just because those that use Office day in day out have managed through that to invest the time in learning the old interface really well doesn't mean that it's good, just that they've had time to learn it. And the idea behind the new UI is that, yes you will have to relearn it, but you will be able to learn it quicker than you did old versions. And then those who are coming to Office a-new will also be able to learn it quicker.
the ribbon should be customizable, but its not so much
microsoft is normally good at that.
there losing money, because their dev team thinks like you do.
(dice clay) ooohhh
Maintaining the forks
Firstly, some people won't want to switch immediately for whatever reason (they are practical and haven't given the new UI enough time - why should they when they know the old interface so can do things initialy much quicker, they are stuborn or it just really is worse) so for a much longer time you will have a fork in skills. But at some point they will have to switch (for why see my second point) and we will have all these same arguments again (except just with a few more people better informed about the pros and cons of the new UI).
Microsoft can't maintain two side by side interfaces for ever. It would last a couple of versions, maximum. It's just too much effort. You have to find places in both interfaces to comfortably fit new features (which leads to the problem with the old interface that the new interface was trying to fix - it's too crowded and complex). It just takes too much effort to maintain.
Office 2007 U.I is far superior to Office 2003 U.I
As a matter of fact the team which designed Office 2007 U.I is actually working on the Windows U.I in order to strongly enhance it like they did for Office U.I.
'Intuitive' is keyword for MS employee..
And intuitive Office 2007 is