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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: 4, Insightful) by pmontra on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:43AM

    by pmontra (1175) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:43AM (#2283)

    Well, if MS's told their designers to design for casual users maybe Metro is not that bad. However I don't think MS understood who their users are. They don't have almost any causal user. They have only users that use Windows almost every day, a few power users and many unskilled (not casual!) users. So they should have asked their designers for another evolutive step of the Windows interface. That's it.

    Their users were flocking to iOS and Android and leaving their home PC behind not because those interfaces are more suited to casual users (they're not casual, they're using phones all the day) but because they come on devices which are more convenient to use where people spend most of their time (not in front of a desk) and where they want to spend it (again, not in front of a desk or with a heavy laptop on their legs in the couch).

    Apple and Google did well without the convergence of mobile and desktop interfaces. MS should have spent all their energies on their mobile OS and should have left alone the desktop one. MS bet a substantial part of the company on the wrong assumptions. It's not a surprise that it's not going well.

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