
User Research Gone Astray: The Case of Windows 8 Explorer - parkov
http://thomaspark.me/2011/10/user-research-gone-astray/
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gizmo
The article asserts that MS completely got it wrong but it doesn't even
attempt to persuade the reader with arguments as to why. To me it isn't
obvious that adding a ribbon with the most frequently used features to the top
of the explorer is a bad approach.

I think the ribbon was a mostly a success in MS Office, Notepad, MS Paint,
Wordpad and so on. So why not also use a ribbon in the explorer?

~~~
awa
Bingo... This is what I was thinking about while reading the article, He cites
1 other blogger who has complained about this. Personally, I generally use the
shortcuts for copy-paste but I do appreciate having the ability to avoid
right-clicking to do some of the other tasks

~~~
cemery
You appreciate not having to right click? Right click is on your mouse, where
as in order to use the ribbon you have to go up to the top. This seems like
pulling the most useful feature out from under your finger to duplicate it
somewhere further away. How does this make sense?

~~~
steverb
Because generally you don't merely right click. You right click and then have
to navigate a small menu of options to find the one you want. The big button
on the ribbon is a huge target and is generally easier for users to hit and
click.

And for some reason, I personally find right-clicking with a track-pad much
more difficult than right clicking with a mouse, although I haven't taken a
lot of time to analyze why as I generally use a desktop machine with mouse.

~~~
contextfree
Or right click and have to navigate a huge menu of options, if enough third-
party shell extensions have had their way with your context menu ...

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jeffreymcmanus
The article assumes that Microsoft's goal is to empower and delight the user.
This isn't really the case; their goal is to reduce support costs for
corporate IT departments. Many of Microsoft's strategies and tactics that seem
nonsensical seem more sensible once you realize that corporate IT managers,
rather than end users, are their customers.

~~~
redthrowaway
I think that's a bit of a facile assumption. Sure, Enterprise is huge for
Microsoft. _But so is the consumer space_. The vast majority of new computers
sold are still Windows boxen, and at $250 a pop home users are still a massive
market for Microsoft. Sure, many or their choices since the NT integration
with XP have been driven by Enterprise needs, but not at the expense of home
users.

I'm far more ready to believe that they simply messed up than that they are
willing to make huge usability and design sacrifices just to appease IT
managers.

Also, remember that we are probably the least important people to Microsoft.
I'd say less than half of us run Windows on our personal machines. Our design
sensibilities don't matter to them; they're designing for our mothers and
technophobic friends. In a word (3), the facebook crowd. We use keyboard
shortcuts, they consider having to right-click to be a burden and a skill that
needs to be learned. We compare the relative benefits of various anti-malware
tools, they renew their subscription of Norton that came with their computer
three years ago. We lament the general craptitude of cmd.exe, they would be
scared if they ever saw it. We talk about the inferiority of snap-to-grid
fonts versus anti-aliasing, and they wouldn't know what kerning was if it bit
them in the ass.

Windows is not designed for the tech and design crowd, so while we might think
of the ribbon as a design travesty, the people it's designed for are the ones
who have three toolbars strewn across the top of ie6.

~~~
jeffreymcmanus
Let's just say that my analysis is not uninformed. There are countless
examples of how Microsoft puts IT managers' needs first -- if this were not
the case, IE6 would have been stricken from the face of the earth five years
ago.

You're also quite mistaken to think that Microsoft (who, you'll recall, is
still run by Steve "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS" Ballmer), doesn't care
about what nerds think. It's no accident that they have a whole division to
sell tools and technologies to developers that's separate from their cash cow
operating system and productivity divisions.

~~~
redthrowaway
>You're also quite mistaken to think that Microsoft ... doesn't care about
what nerds think.

We aren't the target market for _Windows_. Yes, Microsoft wants to get more
developers on .NET making Windows apps, and to the extent that it needs them
to use Windows they'll make it at least usable for that purpose, but they
aren't about to make Windows harder to use for your grandma just to court us.
We prefer keyboard shortcuts (which they have) to messy buttons all over the
place, but if buttons make the product more usable for their core market then
that's what they'll do.

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desigooner
When the F will people start seeing things from a non-power users perspective
before writing such a rant?! At the very least, back up your post with some
sort of an objective argument.

I know a lot of people who spend minutes looking for simple options that are
hidden in menu entries. I think the ribbon is going to be of good use for such
people who'd appreciate the most common use-cases/functions within the reach
of a mouse-click.

~~~
moe
_for such people_

Except those people are quickly dying out - literally.

Also, by any metric, the visual layout and appearance are beyond terrible.
There doesn't seem to be a logical grouping at all.

If _this_ is the answer then someone must have asked the wrong question. (a
button labeled "easy access"? seriously?)

~~~
roel_v
"Except those people are quickly dying out - literally."

Eh, I strongly disagree. I still have the misfortune to every now and then
watch people who are supposed to be from the 'internet generation' (in their
teens to early twenties) struggle with just-beyond-basic computer tasks - like
opening a file with a different program when the extension association has
somehow been screwed up. When I extrapolate their demographic traits, I can
come to no other conclusion than that the vast majority of the general
population does not have the computer skills that designers and software
developers assume them to have.

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brudgers
> _"It seems that essentially, every single command that customers have used
> or requested has been moved into a ribbon or wedged into some corner of the
> chrome. And many are rightfully lambasting it."_

Being surprised by Microsoft employing the ribbon and persistent UI elements
in a redesign of any software product is nothing short utter cluelessness.

The story of the ribbon: [<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4>]

~~~
barrkel
I followed Jensen's blog postings all throughout the development of the
ribbon; but it's all highly unconvincing to me, because it fundamentally is
_at odds with how I interact with software_. Menus work for me because they
are lists of text; when I'm looking for a command, a list of text is exactly
what I want. If it's a command that I use often, it doesn't belong in a menu -
for that, something like a ribbon might be a good idea, though a toolbar uses
less space and doesn't have tabs, so I think it's better - but for commands I
don't use often, lists of text are very close to ideal.

~~~
brudgers
> _"but it's all highly unconvincing to me, it fundamentally is at odds with
> how I interact with software"_

The same argument could have been made about GUI's v command lines or command
lines v punch cards.

Any new UI architecture will be fundamentally at odds with how you interact
with software.

~~~
barrkel
Sure, any new UI modality will be at odds. But for mouse-oriented UI, I
haven't seen anything better for a situation where you have many, yet
infrequent, commands. A search interface seems like it could work well, but
you'd have to know (a) that the software supported the command you're looking
for, and (b) what aliases the software supported for that command. The Windows
start menu search kinda works, most of the time; but that's because you
generally know whether or not you have a particular piece of software
installed. But when you don't know 100% if the software actually has the
feature, and you're looking for it...

So in the absence of an effective search, it seems clear that a list of
commands, grouped into categories, is best for finding infrequent
functionality - particularly when a mouse is the modality.

One thing I am absolutely certain of: searching for a command in a ribbon is
harder than searching a menu. I've had opportunity to do both in unfamiliar
UIs, and searching ribbons is definitely harder.

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yaksha
I don't understand the complaint. The new interface clearly presents what
options/actions are available with text names and pictures. Compared to
hunting through various menus with only an action's name to determine what
something does, this seems an improvment. I would agree that the Ribbon looks
visually busy, but isn't it easier to scan through the Ribbon than search
through multiple menus to locate an action, or to remember a option's location
on the Ribbon than in a menu? Besides, a user knowledgeable of Explorer short
cuts can hide the Ribbon for more usable space.

Useful information consolidated at the bottom of the new Explorer compared to
the previous screenshot where the same information is either not present, or
present in multiple places, feels like a good improvement as well.

With the push towards tablets and touch, doesn't the new Explorer make sense
compared to interacting with the Explorer through menus, right click, or some
other context sensitive input? I say this considering the Build keynote, where
(I think) they mentioned that they believed in a future of even regular
monitors being touch-enabled. Having main options clearly present and touch
friendly works towards this.

~~~
barrkel
No, it's easier to scan menus, because they are left-aligned lists of text.
Ribbons have tiles of various sizes depending on measured importance of the
action, and that busyness makes it harder to scan.

The lower screenshot looks like someone visually puked all over the top of it.
It's got knobs and gizmos hanging out like a big mess of wires, something
you'd expect to see in a stereotypical movie genius's garage, not a user-
friendly UI.

(Touch UI is a complete red herring, IMO. You want different UIs for different
input modalities. That's exactly the opposite of making your mouse UI look
like a touch UI; that approach is just as bad as making your touch UI look
like a mouse UI, which is roughly what Windows kept repeating and failing with
tablets and "Windows for Pen Computing" - the failure here literally goes back
decades.)

~~~
crazygringo
_and that busyness makes it harder to scan._

I couldn't agree more. No idea why you're being downvoted, you make excellent
points.

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edandersen
Are we missing the fact that you can click the up arrow in the top right and
the ribbon disappears? That is essentially the "power user" button.

------
Silhouette
I wish they'd fix all the annoying little things they broke in Windows 7
before moving onto anything new.

In Windows XP, copying files over a network worked. In Windows 7, some
"improvements" seem to result in abysmal file copying performance on a very
noticeable proportion of machines/networks. The Web is full of such stories,
and the best anyone has come to fixing them is basically random tweaking of
low-level network parameters that no user should ever have to go anywhere near
on the off chance that turning off something supposedly beneficial will fix
whatever incompatibility or feedback loop is crippling performance on any
given system.

On Windows XP, you could navigate folders in the tree in explorer by clicking
once to expand and open a folder. In Windows 7, I have yet to find any way to
avoid double-clicking or aiming for those dinking little triangles to expand
each folder, which is not terribly efficient on a modern large, high-
resolution display. Also, why do they hide the triangles unless you're
hovering in the correct area with the mouse? Might a user not want to know
which folders they can see in the tree also contain nested subfolders? Again,
Windows XP did this fine, and the Windows 7 behaviour is objectively inferior
in this respect.

~~~
barrkel
ClassicShell fixed much of the oddities of Windows Explorer's tree view for
me; it brought back the +, and makes it stay even when you're not hovering
with the mouse.

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CurtHagenlocher
There's a difference between making something more (vs less) accessible based
on usage patterns, and making things impossible to do at all.

Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, and as long as they don't touch cmd.exe or
powershell.exe, the Windows org can do whatever they want to Explorer...

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Derbasti
I think the point of the ribbon is to get rid of rightclick menus and the menu
bar. This is certainly a requirement for making a touch-first UI.

That said, it will necessarily make mouse based interaction more clunky. But
they are committed to touch first, so this is not negotiable.

My issue with the new explorer UI is more specifically about the choices they
made within the ribbon. Why put something that provably is never used in there
at all? Why not put context-aware stuff in a context aware tab like the image
tab in Word (only visiblw when an image is selectad)?

~~~
btn
_Why put something that provably is never used in there at all?_

It's important not to confuse "never used because it's useless" and "never
used because nobody knows about it".

Of the items in the Windows 8 "Home" tab that fewer than 84% of people use,
half of them appear to be new features and half are features that exist in
Windows 7 but don't appear in the toolbar or any context-menu, have no
keyboard shortcut, and aren't documented in the help files. People who used
these features in XP could be forgiven for thinking Microsoft removed them in
Vista.

 _Why not put context-aware stuff in a context aware tab like the image tab in
Word_

They do. In their blog post they have examples of context-sensitive tabs for
libraries, drives, and images.

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dorian-graph
Everyone knows better than Microsoft, of course.

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bluedanieru
The most important UI element in that photo is the little hat in the upper-
right corner.

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Hrothgar15
Souping up the file browser in your next operating system is like putting New
Balances on your next horse.

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whackberry
Very very good article. Shit, in fact, the fact that I hurt my foot. But,
other than that, not shit, but an excellent article. Not shit at all.
Congrats.

