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Comment by tdicola | Hacker News Reader

I'm fascinated that they still keep the Building Windows 8 blog up these days. You can go back and read their justifications on why they made the major changes that are now being backed out of win 8, for example start menu: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/11/reflecting-on-... and http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/03/evolving-the-s... I would love to see an analysis of how with so much data and insight they built something people didn't want. Was it all just confirmation bias causing them to see what they wanted in the data?

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I actually read through one of those links, and wow, they really really went through great pains to explain every single decision with data and tracking. This really puts today's announcement into a new light. How DID they so blindly ignore the voices of users and trick themselves into believing the metro UI was better using all that data? There's so much of it that purportedly supports their old view.

I'm one who's never adapted to the new Windows 8, and prefer Windows 7 any time I have a choice. I actually feel that I use my laptop a lot less because it has Windows 8 on it.

That's because they stopped listening to people and started listening to data.

Let that be a warning to all these "data-driven-anything" people.

From what I remember, they were pointing out an overwhelming majority of their users were only pressing the same 8 or so buttons at the bottom of the taskbar to start apps.

And I'm on board with that.

It's just that one needs the Start Menu to get those 8 or so buttons into the taskbar in the first place!!!!

"Yes, Mrs. Bathwater? Your baby is...thataway!"

haha just looked at my taskbar. 8 apps.

I don't know really. Since Balmer kicked in, Microsoft's decision making process is a sort of a mystery. Can a company with so deep pockets, so well establish fail consequently?

There are still around people running Windows XP because they consider them superior. I never had issues with Vista or 7 (although never used them as a desktop), but Windows 8 are a new low...

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford

Casing user opinion is in my opinion a pretty terrible way to do UX. It's an interactive process not a committee one.

I imagine they ignored all the noise by filtering out all comments about issues they already addressed, then looked at how the ribbon ui went down and ended up a superb success.

I support end users. Most wouldn't go into 'all programs' unless directed. None know that panel as the "start menu" any more since they took the word 'start' off it.

It's just not that big of a deal to skip over every other cool thing in 8 to stick on 7.

Personally I want to see windowed metro apps, the start screen maybe the bottom half height/full width of my display (13" 1080p) and a transparent background.

That would be good I think. The corners are a nice idea although i never really use the left one.

Can we all use this effort to cry for a feature that would actually help like say, native virtual desktops in Windows? Wicked useful.

I have a Venue 8 pro that is my only Windows 8 device and I love it. I don't know that I would like this in a larger/more expensive device, but it pretty much kicks the shit out of a Nexus 7. The screen isn't as nice, and the UI isn't as smooth, but an x86 and the ability to install Windows apps makes up for it easily.

Your comment highlights the far more unsettling truth -- that a company with a great deal of resources, research and user-feedback still created something that the market rejected.

I deal with this fear by believing that users crave a personal vision. They can get into a product that is foreign to them as long as it represents a singular designed and cohesive flow. They reject 'design by committee' or data-driven designs because they represent the average of what all users want, not what any single user desires.

Or it could be misused data. I suspect that MS may have placed too much weight on mobile users.

Someone else commented what I also suspected. It is not that MS didn't do any usability studies or analysis what is better. It is just that they suits had a pre established vision on how to do things and then they tossed the studies that didn't support that vision and kept the ones that did.

It is like wanting a nice feedback about Star Trek, so you go to a Star Trek convention and stay the hell away from any Star Wars Convention. There, you will have massive data that support your pre established notion that Trek is the best thing since sliced bread.

I'm familiar with the mentality that designed these interfaces -- just a stubbornness that everyone thinks the way you do, and hoping data can do the thinking for you. All that data, but no insight into how an everyday user would react.

I mentioned it below, but keyboard analytics show the z key is hardly used and should be removed, perhaps available to power users.

"keyboard analytics show the z key is hardly used and should be removed, perhaps available to power users"

LOL, too true. Let's replace Z with a '.com' key since the data tells us people are constantly typing '.com'. We can move Z to be Ctrl-Shift-A.

Yet Android, for instance, removes the number key row and does actually add a .com key. It's not as ridiculous as it appears.

Isn't a PR blog, by definition, more than a little disingenuous?

I imagine certain data was cherry-picked to tow the party line (Ballmer?) but now with the new talent coming into power, things are changing.

I imagine certain data was cherry-picked to tow the party line

There isn't any evidence of that. The far more interesting possibility is that the data suggested that they do what they did, but that the data was wrong. An examination of how and why that might be the case would be fascinating.

As opposed to saying "typical Ballmer!"

I believe they were tricked by the data. "Only 1.2% of users use this feature, so we got rid of it!" And they did that 100 times with 100 different features. And pissed everyone off.

Exactly: "The z key is only used in 1.2% of keystrokes, let's remove it! (It's a power user feature available using alt + ASCII code)"

With data-driven ui decisions, it's not so easy to see these fallacies when staring at a spreadsheet.

Data didn't suggest, but the managers were able to find the support in the data. When you want to find something really hard, you will find it.

A lot of "poll questions" are designed to present the party who paid for them in the best light. Both the managers who request the poll and those who can give the bill to the managers for the poll have the same interests.

> The far more interesting possibility is that the data suggested that they do what they did, but that the data was wrong.

New Coke scored better than Pepsi in blind taste tests, yet New Coke was a sales disaster. Pepsi scored better than Coke Classic in blind taste tests, yet the Second Coming of Coca-Cola quickly came out on top.

What I find ironic is that the same people who did the Office Ribbon also came up with Metro. The Ribbon was all about exposing features that had previously been buried a couple of layers down in menus, because users will only use features that stare them in the face.

But Metro was all about burying features that had previously been staring users in the face!

New Coke was a disaster because Coca-Cola did not let its consumers choose between the two products and instead planned to stop making Coke Classic entirely. There is some similarity to Microsoft's decision to have Windows 8 boot into Metro by default.

Coca-Cola's pre-release focus groups told them that a minority of people would have a very hostile reaction to the elimination of Coke Classic, but they decided to ignore the data. You can see something similar if you read the comments of the Windows 8 development blog.

> The far more interesting possibility is that the data suggested that they do what they did, but that the data was wrong.

Agreed, you can even see good UI ideals behind several controversial decisions... large buttons on the start screen (just like enlarged buttons on the ribbon) suggest someone read Fitt's Law. Searching is a task that takes your focus while you type, it seems to deserve a little more screen real estate than the tiny eighth of a screen 7 offers.

Maybe MS designs are evaluated in usability studies by charitable or willing users, but are sort of foisted on the public once shipped, and evaluated much more critically.

Or maybe MS is lumping all of its users into one profile, when there are really so many Windows users, you almost have to break them into clusters of users.

I had a VM running Blue for a while. It was a jarring experience at first, I got used to it, but I didn't immediately run out and buy it. I mostly type to launch, so I never clicked on anything on the start page, but didn't really notice a dive in my workflow, since search was a little better. It was neither as good as its proponents claimed, nor as bad as its detractors made it out to be for me. But maybe that's just my workflow.

Windows is designed for so many audiences, they should really disaggregate their UI from their core. Something that makes Linux incredibly confusing might actually be really necessary for good UI design for this many people.

Certainly not by definition, although they may tend to be. The truth can be very good pr.

The expression is 'toe the line' - as in keep your metaphorical toes behind the metaphorical line - stay in line with everyone else.

I think Sinofsky had a Steve Jobs complex.

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