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Microsoft Shows Off Radical New UI, Could Be Used In Windows 8
autospa writes "In a three and a half minute video, Microsoft may have shown the world what it has in store for the eagerly awaited Windows 8. In the video Microsoft showed a radically different interface from past versions of Windows — even Windows 7. Running on Surface 2, the touch-screen successor to the original Microsoft Surface, the device accepts input from a Windows Phone 7 handset (HTC HD7). Gone are the icons that drive Windows, OS X, and Linux operating systems of past and present. In their place are 'bubbles' that interact with files and post streaming information off the internet."
No, he's not below average. The problem is mostly likely not that he finds the new interface simply difficult to use, but that he probably has a decade or two of experience using the old interface. He's had all that time to learn where each feature was. When each new version came out, the old features were almost always exactly like before, and just a few new menu items and buttons were added each time. Each time he had to learn a few new things, but all of his old knowledge was still relevant. Now suddenly in one version, everything he's spent many years learning has been pulled out from under him, and he's instinctively looking in the wrong places for everything. Habits that are that well ingrained can be incredibly difficult to break.
I've been using the new interface for about 3 years now, and I still instinctively want to look in the wrong (ie: old) locations. What makes it even more difficult is that there are items in the new interface the mislead people accustomed to the old interface. For example, in the old interface of Excel, if you wanted to insert a new row into your spreadsheet, you went to the menu bar and picked Insert -> Rows. With the new interface, you go up to the top, you see a tab on the ribbon named "Insert" and you automatically think "that's where I'm gonna find the option to insert a row". So you click on it and, I'll be damned....you can insert just about everything EXCEPT a row or column.
Did you watch the video? I found the summary's weaknesses much more palatable than the ridiculously vague video in TFA, which was filled with corporate-speak, and showed off a bunch of interactivity projects without demonstrating how any of these would be used in real world applications, let alone how they would improve the way we currently interact with computers.