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Windows 8 Designer Explains Why It Annoys You

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: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 19 2014, @03:35PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @03:35PM (#2529) Journal

    I have used Linux exclusively for 15 years. The early years were painful. The last 10 have been a dream. Everything works, no viruses, no spyware. Updates are as simple as "apt-get upgrade." So it has been curious to watch so many struggle so long with this thing called Microsoft, or wrap themselves in the velvet straitjacket called Apple. I have the freedom I want. Canonical, for example, can do whatever they want to with their distro, I can veto any part of it any time I want to on my system. If any distro gets too heavy-handed, the community forks a liberated version and everyone continues on their merry way. I can't imagine computing in any other fashion--the computer is a tool that serves me, not the other way around. So it's curious to watch MS and Apple users struggle with what the respective monopoles want to do with them. Why don't they opt out? Don't they want to free? It's reminiscent of the old Cold War, when we Americans just could not understand why Soviets didn't want to be free; living under a slave system was that unimaginable.

    And I suspect that is what is really behind user rebellion against Win8. Sure it changes functionality and the interface and all those nitty-gritty things, but most of all it has completely broken with the culture MS spent 30 years building up and which the user base had grown so accustomed to they barely noticed it was there anymore. I suspect Apple would run into the same rebellion if they ever pulled a similar move. Society has at long last begun to internalize computers and information technology, so it has moved beyond the realm of the details of functionality and UI and hardware when considering what next to do with our software or hardware products. Now we must consider the technology-using culture of our users in a way that goes beyond mere UI.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by joshuajon on Wednesday February 19 2014, @05:55PM

    by joshuajon (807) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @05:55PM (#2674)

    > I suspect Apple would run into the same rebellion if they ever pulled a similar move.

    They did, in OSX. It was pretty well received if I understand the history of the situation correctly.