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posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-had-one-job-ONE-JOB dept.
stmuk writes:

"BGR reflects on recent comments by a Metro designer. 'Metro is a content consumption space,' Microsoft UX designer Jacob Miller explains, 'It is designed for casual users who only want to check Facebook, view some photos, and maybe post a selfie to Instagram. It's designed for your computer illiterate little sister, for grandpas who don't know how to use that computer dofangle thingy, and for mom who just wants to look up apple pie recipes. It's simple, clear, and does one thing (and only one thing) relatively easily. That is what Metro is. It is the antithesis of a power user.'"

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by evilviper on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:41AM

    by evilviper (1760) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:41AM (#2247) Homepage Journal

    I don't buy this idiotic justification for a second. "Casual" users need to be able to get to the dammed calculator, too. Casual users aren't notably good at finding a single unlabeled tiny icon in a list of a million barely distinguishable icons.

    The miserably poor sales indicates FAR more than just power-users HATE it. And finally, Android works GREAT for casual users, and yet it doesn't piss-off damn-near everyone who uses it.

    --
    Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by acid andy on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:56AM

    by acid andy (1683) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:56AM (#2261) Homepage Journal

    It's not even just about finding tiny icons. How will they know that if they move their mouse (yeah who's going to want a touchscreen setup on a desktop computer?) to a certain magic corner of the screen it will make the "charms" appear or what the fuck the "charms" are anyway? That doesn't make an OS easier to use or more intuitive, unless they're intentionally hiding things they think those people will never want to see.

    For a long while as I've observed with each iteration of Windows software and OSes how the location of buttons, functions and pull down menu items (remember them?) seemed to be shuffled around almost randomly, that unless the designers in Micro$oft are being pressured to make change for it's own sake (and they probably are) that the prime purpose of this insanity is to make lots and lots of money from people sending business users on their expensive training courses - over and over again.

    --
    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
    • (Score: 5, Funny) by tftp on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:33AM

      by tftp (806) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:33AM (#2276) Homepage

      Charms are essential. That's where they have the "Search" button that, once pressed, tells you that the search on the desktop does not work (pray tell, why?) They also have the sharing button there that doesn't do a thing. You can't live without those invaluable controls.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday February 19 2014, @04:01PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @04:01PM (#2546)

        I also laughed my ass off the first time somebody told me the Charms bar could be opened with Windows+C. And how the hell would I know that this thing is called the Charms bar? Does it even say "charms" on the bar? And I need to know it's there in the first place, let alone what it's named.

        Oh, but there's a one-time tutorial the first time you log in. Well okay, I guess everything's fine then.

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Jaruzel on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:28PM

          by Jaruzel (812) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:28PM (#2754) Homepage Journal

          Oh, but there's a one-time tutorial the first time you log in. Well okay, I guess everything's fine then.

          And you didn't even get that until the Windows 8.1 'Bugfix' :D

          -Jar

          --
          This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
          • (Score: 1) by tangomargarine on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:06PM

            by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:06PM (#2793)

            So when Windows 8 first came out, we were just left with this [youtube.com]?

            Winning!

            --
            "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 1) by jonh on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:19PM

          by jonh (733) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:19PM (#2875) Homepage

          Windows 8 is super-intuitive! To shut down your PC from the keyboard all you need to do is this:

          • Win+C, Down, Down, Enter, End, Up, Left, Enter, Down, Down, Enter.

          I wish I was joking... (And if there is a quicker way, please put me out of my misery and tell me how... :)

          • (Score: 2, Informative) by ridley4 on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:24AM

            by ridley4 (2025) on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:24AM (#3004)

            Win+R for the run box, then 'shutdown /s /t 0' should still work, or '/r /t 0' if you want a reboot. For some reason the shutdown command defaults to 30s, so /t 0 will make it skip that. There's probably some sort of reason behind that, because it's not the usual way to shut down a windows box.

            • (Score: 1) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 20 2014, @04:35PM

              by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday February 20 2014, @04:35PM (#3558)

              Especially hilarious that it's pretty much faster to do it on Windows with a command line, considering that with (X)Ubuntu, it's all of 2 clicks with a taskbar widget.

              --
              "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by TheLink on Wednesday February 19 2014, @03:48PM

      by TheLink (332) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @03:48PM (#2538) Journal
      Discoverability is at an all time low. In old versions of Windows a noob^H^H^H^H^H casual user would be able to _find_ and do almost everything a casual user would want to do by just left clicking stuff, from the "start" button to the usual menus.

      Now Microsoft changes lots of stuff in ways that helps neither the noobs nor "pros" who'd take the trouble to learn shortcuts.

      For example: to logoff (a common task in many enterprises) you have to right click on where the start button used to be (in 8.0 or the start button in 8.1). How ridiculous is that? Which UI expert expects such users to keep track of whether it is right or left click? And how the heck are users supposed to figure out such things? Randomly left and right click on everything?

      It's so ridiculous that I've noticed that many users actually find it faster to use google to figure out how to do common tasks in Windows 8, than to try to discover it via the UI.

      It's not easier for the noobs nor faster for the pros. For example, shutting down in Windows XP for the noobs - left click start, select turn off computer. Shutting down in XP for the pros: winkey, u, u (the advantage is you even do this without a mouse and the monitor off). And no, pushing the power button doesn't always do a shutdown on all PCs.
      • (Score: 1) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday February 19 2014, @06:09PM

        by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 19 2014, @06:09PM (#2683) Journal

        "Randomly left and right click on everything?"

        You make lots of good points and I'm not really arguing against you but like many others I used to teach a course on doing this, it wasn't cheap but it included keyboard-mashing :P

        Currently I would possibly have been teaching the replacement "Jazz Hands 101" which includes poking/stabbing, pinching, and rude gestures.

        This might all sound strange but computer-illiteracy is nothing but a specific combination of shyness and risk aversion common in adults (or it's just plain disinterest because they don't really need to know or use any of it).

        Likewise a big reason many people fear the CLI is the enormous amount of possible permutations: doing it like a million monkeys would isn't really a practical option (and how many permille would read any manual?) so they just stay away.

        All that said I try to avoid both Windows and Android (and Apple for other reasons).

        --
        Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:24AM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:24AM (#2312) Homepage

    > "Casual" users need to be able to get to the dammed calculator, too.

    The proof-of-concept exploits will launch that for them.

    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mojo chan on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:22PM

    by mojo chan (266) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:22PM (#2366)

    They clearly massively underestimated the "casual user". He uses the example of the computer illiterate little sister, but I'd be surprised if I met a child in the western world that wasn't capable of operating a PC.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by monster on Wednesday February 19 2014, @03:28PM

      by monster (1260) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @03:28PM (#2525) Journal

      Not only that. The "grandpas" of today are increasingly quite adept with technology and gizmos, since many of them already used computers in their jobs.

      If that explanation is true, they are designing their UXs for less people than they believe.

  • (Score: 1) by Jtmach on Wednesday February 19 2014, @04:53PM

    by Jtmach (1481) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @04:53PM (#2599)

    Casual users aren't notably good at finding a single unlabeled tiny icon in a list of a million barely distinguishable icons.

    I'm not so sure. The casual users that I know are the ones with a million icons on their desktop. They just somehow know that the one they want is the third from the left and two rows down.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Snotnose on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:21PM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:21PM (#2808)

    I have a friend who is an Interior Designer. Last month her company gave everyone a surface tablet. Metro is universally hated by all.

    These are a bunch of 40+ people, mostly computer illiterate.

    I have yet to hear of anyone who actually likes Metro. Best anyone has said is "Meh, it's ok".

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.