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Comment by coffeemug | Hacker News Reader

> How do you upgrade the UX of a legacy product like Access without pissing off everyone?

Incrementally.

Windows incrementally removed the "Start" button and had to roll back.

This is simply an issue of creating generational products that adapt to the new ways your demographics are using technology. You can incrementally change a product but you will never be able to use new interaction patterns in a product that is used by people who don't know them and don't want to learn them.

Generation Z and Generation Alpha kids are not going to use Access. They will be using this or whatever succeeds this. That's for sure.

This is the same reason why Apple is going full steam into making the iPad its core productivity and creativity device. Newer generations have way better dexterity when using touch as an input, than let's say my generation (millennials). They know Macbooks are products with a UX expiration date.

I’m a Millennial and I’ll gladly use an iPad as my primary computer if it actually does everything a normal laptop can do. I honestly don’t see a difference in touch-based technology aptitude or dexterity between Millennials and Gen Z.

I considered myself pretty good with touch devices until I saw a kid editing a video in TikTok. Believe me, they have more dexterity.

I learned to use a computer with a physical keyboard and mouse. My nephew’s first and main computing device was an iPad. That definitely makes a difference.

This is interesting, would you be able to find something on YouTube that highlights this dexterity? I’m not entirely sure what to look for to see this new way of computing.

Look up videos of 20-somethings using Ableton Push and similar devices. They don't just play music with it. They use it to make entire songs at every stage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAeybdD5UoQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTx3G6h2xyA

I already have enough trouble with a piano with clear groupings to help find notes. I don't think I would get far with one of these.

This is certainly impressive, and I couldn’t do it, but I seen no reason why someone who puts an appropriate amount of hours into practice couldn’t do this too, no matter their age.

> they have more dexterity.

Carpet industry is infamous for this, employing kids for their 'nimble fingers' for manipulating delicate knots.

However, question is the same generation who are dexterous in editing TikTok video on mobile phone will grow up and loose dexterity. So, are we talking about new interface paradigm for only kids (and not any specific generation - X, Y or Z)?

Interesting. I didn't think about it that way, but it's totally possible that you lose that ability as you grow older.

Essential tremors are absolutely a thing as one ages too (and develops a coffee habit).

> Believe me, they have more dexterity.

Perhaps until you try them with tools like scissors, or manipulating objects like a piece of string?

I think Dexterity implies good skills with a wide range of affordances (not just with a touch interface).

>> Windows incrementally removed the "Start" button and had to roll back.

I mean, flat out removing something, by definition, is not incremental.

They should've shrunk the button down each release. For any features I plan to remove I'll gradually make them smaller.

If you can’t remove elements, you can’t refine design incrementally.

The corner still worked as a start menu, and they told you that on first run. It was as incremental as possible.

"They told you it was there" from a UX perspective is about as good as it not being there.

Didn’t they keep the “start” button but change the menu to the full screen Win8 version until they brought back the menu for Win10?

I don't remember how it happened as I had moved off of Windows in that period, maybe they made it slowly opaque over a couple releases.

That's the one thing you really don't want to do. I know, product and UX teams everywhere believe it's a good plan, but I suggest talking to users. There are few things that generate stronger emotions than "They moved my FUCKING menu item AGAIN"

They were actually doing that. Microsoft Access inherited many of the productivity features of Excel, such as filters in the column headers. It was great.

Where they dropped the ball was the core engine and capabilities.

What people wanted was quick & easy way to produce HTML5 forms and tables, but with the power of a native GUI app.

Meanwhile, Microsoft was removing features from Access, such as the SQL Server based "Access Data Projects" (ADP) mode, which was much more scalable than the legacy Jet database mode.

> What people wanted was quick & easy way to produce HTML5 forms and tables, but with the power of a native GUI app.

Spot on. As with all things, Microsoft-of-the-time saw the web as a competitor to its products, not a new platform.

They actually could have built substantial portions of Office 365 (which is to say, cloud -first and -integrated Office) in the early 2000s, but tried to protect their legacy businesses.

It's nice to see them finally getting there, but Access-to-Web would still be a killer product for much of Enterprise, if they could solve the data source connectivity issues in a clean way for users.

Actually, filters in the column headers came from a database, Paradox that predated GUI apps and was a major player in the PC database market.

The way people reacted to the Ribbon disagrees with you :) Toolbars specifically were replaced with an improved chunk of UI, everything else was left the same, and people were furious. Rightly so, to a degree - learning to use it was an adjustment. Now imagine that the whole app's UI incrementally changed and not just parts of it... nobody's gonna be happy about that.

> Toolbars specifically were replaced with an improved chunk of UI, everything else was left the same

Was hiding the file menu items behind a round logo that looked nothing like a button part of that improved UI?

Is the current file menu that looks like the rest of the menus but behaves totally different part of the improved UI?

The Menus were a toolbar before the ribbon existed, which is why you could customize them. Visual Studio was the same. So it was natural for the ribbon to eat up the menus as well. Certainly that's part of why people disliked it, but the artificial separation between 'menu' and 'toolbar' was already kind of a problem and that's why they were unified.

People disliked Ribbon because it took a logical system geared towards power users (hierarchical menus) and replaced it with an organic system geared towards new users (usage-driven ordering).

There was no way that wasn't going to piss off a very vocal segment of users, and Microsoft, to their detriment, badly botched the messaging.

My point is that even if Ribbon was a good idea the implementation had a number of flaws that made me question of UX really was the reason and not something else.

My go-to example is how the File menu was hidden behind a non-button that looked just like a fancy application logo.

Why would an actual, caring ux developer do that in a flagship product?

Am I the only damn person that liked the ribbon's?!

I don't think it's a question of what people ultimately like. It's that change is frustrating, especially for only marginal benefit.

I like the ribbon today, and I complained when it was released. And I stand by that complaint, I think pushback against change serves an important role, and developers should feel pain when making UX changes.

It's not just a matter of some changes being bad, even when they're good there's a cost. My grandparents both had iPhones, loved them and loved learning to do different things on them. Whenever I'd visit they'd have a laundry list of things they wanted to learn to do. Over time, that list was slowly supplanted by relearning how to do things they once knew, but had changed. It was extremely frustrating because so much of it was near-pointless. Easy for me (and most of their test-base, I'm sure) to relearn, but very difficult for nonagenarians.

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