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Windows 8 Metro: The Good Kind of Market Segmentation?
nk497 writes "A UX designer working at Microsoft has taken to Reddit to explain why Windows 8's Metro screen isn't designed for power users — but is still good news for them. Jacob Miller, posting as 'pwnies,' said Metro is the 'antithesis of a [power user's desktop],' and designed for 'your computer illiterate little sister,' not for content creators or power users. By splitting Windows into Metro and the desktop, Microsoft has created space for casual users as well as power users."
Update: 02/18 18:14 GMT by S : Further explanations from Miller are available now.
And this would explain why they use the Metro interface on Server 2012? So my illiterate little sister can mange servers in the data center?
At least this one admits to working for MS.
I swear, I have seen more shills flood the internet advocating Windows8 than for any other product in history.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Where do I mod this article -1 Flamebait? I'd really like to know.
Ever notice that Cobra Commander sounds an awful lot like Star scream?
The Windows 8 metro ui drove me mad for months, but because it's still Windows I kept searching for a way to kill them off. Of course I installed Classic shell right away, but finding that way: this: http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-remove-all-bundled-modern-apps-from-your-user-account-in-windows-8/ really fixed Windows 8 for me.
Windows 8 is dumbed down in more ways than just this Metro/Desktop schizophrenia.
A lot of power features are not "hidden". They are GONE.
If you down want to show them to the causual user that's ok with me..
But make them optional AND ALLOW TO MAKE THEM DEFAULT for those of us who need to get real work done.
(Sorry about the shouting, I just spend several hours fighting the usability nightmare that is a 2012 server box.)
This "UX designer" has completely missed the complaint everyone has lodged against Windows 8 and its interface. Nobody cares that there's a new interface added to the system, or even that it's the default. But power users do care that there's no way to bypass it.
Give us a way to shut it off and restore the original functionality in a control panel somewhere.
And shut your dumbass mouth, Jacob Miller. We didn't miss the point. You did.
Ditto. Casual users are used to the XP interface, and they really don't want to be forced to use some crappy shiny thing designed for three year olds.
Because Microsoft is making themselves look bad there. Ideally a UI will have good discoverability. That is, things that you want to do often are easy to do, and things that you want to do infrequently are possible to discover, or figure out.
A good example of this are hot keys. Most apps have them, but you don't need them to use the app. They are easy to figure out because they are listed next to every menu item, so if you forget how to past, you can look at 'paste' from the menu and see it's cntrl-V.
The joke here is that Win8 is not discoverable, the gestures are rather hidden. Furthermore creating two different UIs for the same computer is pretty near the opposite of good design. You will inevitably run into the same types of problems you have with 'mobile' websites, which are not good for anybody.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Because neither Slashdot, nor Neowin, nor PC Pro can apparently do a little goddamn legwork, here's a link to the comment thread on Reddit.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
If I had been astroturfing, I wouldn't have been using the term Metro. Nor would I have been stating that Apple has better mobile hardware. Nor would I have used that account - have you seen my post history? http://www.reddit.com/user/pwn...
Asking if Metro was the good kind of market segmentation is sort of like asking if your wife cheating on you is the 'good' kind of having 'time to ourselves'
Metro was a bullshit, Clippy, Chicken McNugget version of the iOS design.
That's *all* it's ever been, and everyone knows this...posting pointless articles about the 'U/X' of Metro is silly. Metro and all Windows products tack on 'U/X' as an afterthought.
To try to understand good design principles from looking at M$ design process is like learning how to cook by watching a trucker take a shit.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Whose little sister is computer illiterate in 2014? Both of my little sisters are established professionals who have been using computers since they were children, and anyone younger than them has been using computers since birth. This mythical audience doesn't exist except in the minds of "UX Designers".
My experience mirrors yours. I've had gift cards, thank you cards, and other notes shoved under my office door for pointing people to StartMenu8 ever since Windows 8 became available. Some people like the UI, but MANY seem to loathe it (as I do)...
bork bork bork!
Metro lacks the user friendliness of a pet rock.
Learning curve is high enough that an old windows user like me (since the early 90s) can't figure out how to open an application or find where anything I have installed is.
No menus, no help, no interface, no organization, no context, no structure and too many ads.
I can't help anyone running windows 8. I can't find applications, documents, programs or interface. I'm not sure what that great scrolling walls of ads is, but it doesn't seem to relate to anything resembling functionality - it's easier to find an installed app using "google play" than it is to use that.
And forget "power user". I DO know how to open a command shell, and replace the scrolling wall of stupidity with a terrible second-rate wannabe menu that injects ads everywhere. (which is to say, pretty much every start menu replacement)
I don't actually -need- the start menu - the folders of windows 3 were actually more or less ok.
If I were running a tablet with this stupidity, it'd probably be tossed across the room.
It managed to build an interface almost as terrible and in your face as Ubuntu's "Unity". Except that it takes 50-90% of your CPU to run windows 8 and Unity only prevents you from using it.
I'm not sure who designed either system, but they should be kicked out of user design and forced to go back to school, perhaps in something useful like sales.
The quote is out of context, and was part of a larger list of users. On its own it does seem negative - here's my full quote: Metro is a content consumption space. 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.
... and get off my lawn.
I posted this story a while back. Still relevant:
I tried changing the wallpaper on my brother-in-law's Windows 8 laptop the other day. So I downloaded a picture, and opened it after it finished downloading. The picture loaded in the OS' default image viewer. I saw the picture appear, full-screened, and with no interface. I tried right-clicking the picture. That didn't give me a menu, but an interface did fade into appearance. I promptly saw an option to "Set as."
I clicked it, thinking: "Surely this will let me set the image as the wallpaper", but I was given just two options: set as lockscreen (IT'S A LAPTOP!), and set as 'app tile'
I immediately closed the window since the option I wanted wasn't there--no wait, actually I didn't close it. There was no UI option to close this fullscreen picture. I alt-tabbed back to the desktop. I found the picture again, right clicked it, and went to the "open with" option. There were like 5 image viewers that came with Windows to choose from. I chose the old "Windows Photo Viewer" and set it as the default so this madness won't happen again.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
The problem isn't that The UI Formerly Named Metro is good for non-power users, it's that Metro is bad for power users and you can't avoid using it.
(Likewise, at least so far you can still say "no" to Slashdot Beta.)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
My grampa was not retarded, so he wouldn't have liked it.
"AND I'M WORKING HARD, to keep you little sister ILLITERATE!"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I don't know what would be enough **for you** but TFA is shameful admission
Shameful if you are in the design part of the tech industry.
This is M$ fully admitting that Metro (and many of their design decisions) was nothing more than **DUMBING DOWN THE INTERFACE**
I know coders don't get this as easily b/c you dont think of the user...but look...
Metro's awfulness is an expression of what M$ thinks of its users. Its 'easy' version of the OS is so mind-numbingly stilted that in attempting to be usable by the stupidest person on earth, it has instead been rendered useless to *everyone*
This article is proof that Microsoft really does act as if it **hates its users**
Thank you Dave Raggett
"Before Windows 8 and Metro came along, power users and casual users - the content creators and the content consumers - had to share the same space," he added. "It was like a rented tuxedo coat - something that somewhat fit a wide variety of people."
There's a difference between a physical thing that cannot be changed easily like hardware and software which is more malleable. Also they don't have to share the same space. See Android vs Linux. See iOS vs OS X.
If that's the case, why not allow power users to turn off the settings they find annoying? "We needed casual users to learn this interface," Miller explained. "If there was an option to make all the new go away, many users would do it. It's the same reason why Facebook doesn't have an option to go back to old designs of Facebook. People hate change.
Casual users would not turn off the interface. Casual users would save files to the desktop because they can't be bothered to put them in folders. And another problem is that this new interface still has enough elements of the old interface to confuse both power users and casual users. It is bi-polar at times and more of a sign it really wasn't ready when launched. If history is correct it won't be before the 3rd version that MS gets Metro working acceptably.
He pointed out that power users shouldn't normally have to use the Metro Start screen once they've pinned their ten most used apps to the taskbar. Microsoft's research shows that this covers more than 90% of interactions, and the rest of the time it makes sense to search textually for that little-used app, rather than hunting around with your mouse. "That's why we default to keyboard navigation (search to launch/find) in this situation," he explained.
Most power users I know use more than 10 applications. Also searching pages and pages of unsorted tiles is much faster than using text. Oh, the solution is to manually organize the tiles for each and every program that the user may or may not use right away. Yes, that's much easier.
Indeed, Windows 8 isn't designed to be used with a mouse, he wrote. "It's designed for keyboard (power users) and touch (casual users) primarily," he said. "Time trials showed that these were far faster methods than mouse-based navigation on the old start menu, so we optimised for that."
So that makes sense for MS to put it on desktops where the primary input is keyboard and mouse? Also the interface isn't good for casual users either. UI experts like Jacob Nielsen has listed all the issues with Metro for power and novice users.
"In the short term you'll see less resources devoted to it until we get Metro figured out, but once that happens the desktop is very much a first world citizen," Miller wrote. "It will be equal with Metro. The desktop is not going away, we can't develop Windows in Metro."
So everyone is a guinea pig until version 3 then?
While admitting that Microsoft hasn't done a good job of marketing the changes and explaining how to use the new interface, Miller revealed that he's currently working on new first-run experience tutorials to address that.
While marketing is often an area of fail for MS, the problem is that MS would like to ignore that wasn't the only problem. The interface suffers from many other defects. Scores of beta testers including many loyal Windows fans told MS about issues before Win 8 was launched. Also if you have to teach someone how to use an interface, then the interface isn't intuitive. Not all interfaces should be but an interface for casual and novice users should be.
And he suggested that Windows 9 will help clean up many of the issues with Windows 8, admitting that Microsoft appears to be working on a "tick/tock" development cycle. "Windows 7
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Doesn't matter if you're right if you can't sell it.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I run a computer shop and a lot of people stop in with questions about Windows 8. The #1 question is how the hell to do anything in the metro interface. Even I had to look up on Youtube how to simply close an app because there's no red X, escape does nothing, and alt-F4 works intermittently. I've had people repeatedly run out of operating memory due to too many apps open because they don't know to click and drag the title bar and sort of throw it to close it. It's the least "simple user" friendly interface ever made. Everything is hidden or unlabeled. It's absolutely the opposite of what he's saying.
Where do you get the idea that having a searchable list of all applications, not segmented into categories, is a good idea for the novice user? You've created an interface that outright requires previous computer knowledge and said it's for the people who aren't used to computers. Novice Ned isn't going to know what application to search for to do whatever task he's trying to accomplish, he's going to need a categorized list that lets him narrow down his options. What you've done with Unity and Metro is generate a list of executables and claimed it's user friendly. Idiots.
To really understand metro, you have to watch the development videos at microsoft virtual academy website.
Somehow their UI designers came up with this ridicilous notion that your apps don't need any "distract" menus or system icons and it should only display content. Content is the king they say, none of those resizing bars or window icons or anything. This is the main reason why metro apps look like that.
It's like someone designed a car and said.. "you don't doors once you're in the car all you need is the road". To that I say "getting in and out a car shouldn't be an un-intuitive mess dumbass"
did you forget to take your meds?
But suggesting that Win 8 Metro is "designed to be the anti-thesis [of power user desktop]" seems like big time BS. All you need to do is look at the lock/login screen: Only a power user would have the inclination to start taping and pushing and dragging things around trying to figure out how to activate the login process. A less experience user would just click around aimlessly looking for a button missed or can't see wondering what the next step is.
The best interfaces seem to have simple expressions with simple feedback that extend into powerful combination. Win 8 Metro fails at this pretty badly because so many things are never explained or demonstrated or even suggested let alone expressed cleanly or completely. What does putting the pointer in the corner do? Why does click-drag direction-release count as a swipe only in the shell? Expecting a new or neophyte user to figure this out with the intuitive help of Windows 8 is kind of fanciful.
What, move your mouse to the right edge until a huge gutter of icons appears, then clicking "Settings" in order to find a button to shut down / restart isn't your idea of intuitive?
Remember: this is the company that gave us "start > shut down" - you have to start before you can stop!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
You know how if you have to explain a joke, it isn't funny? Well, if you have to explain a decision you made like this, there's a solid chance it wasn't the right one. Especially when it comes to matters of personal taste, preferences, perception, etc. "No, see, you should like this, because..."
"De gustibus non est disputandum."
(I'm not using Latin to make me look smarter, but to illustrate that this idea has been around for a long damn time.)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
EXACTLY - I have been an MS user (sometimes reluctantly, sometimes enthusiastically) since windows 3.0 running in real mode on a 286. I have at least tried every O/S since then. I have been a windows developer since windows 3.1. NEVER before windows 8 did I have to search Google (when Bing proved completely useless) to learn how to close an app, or do much of anything really. This is by a very WIDE margin the most unfriendly, un-intuitive O/S I have ever seen. As an experiment, since MS claims this is aimed at "my mother" I installed it on a laptop for my wife - a MAC user who can do basic things on a PC but prefers the MAC. She hates it. She can't do anything without help, even after switching to 8.1, and adding classic shell, and populating her desktop she hates it since it keeps throwing her into these crazy metro apps that she cant close and can't find a way to get out of. MS needs to abandon this horrid abortion and go back to the windows 7 desktop, if they want to keep metro on the phone - fine, even on a tablet most of my coworkers live in the desktop, this either needs a LOT of help form some poached Apple UI people, or it needs to be gone. MS has FAILED utterly to address either the casual user or the pro - this thing needs to die.
I don't know what data centers you spend time in, but 99% of the Windows servers I encounter in data centers (maybe more) are explicitly NOT headless. And with the MS certification programs for admins emphasizing the "GUI way" of doing things way too much, there's no reason to expect that to change with Windows Server 2012 adoption.
In fact, if you accept Azure as the best reference profile for Windows servers, I'm not even sure there's a way to get a headless Windows server on Azure (try searching "site:windowsazure.com headless" if you don't believe me).
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
One thing that nobody seems to talk about is what is Metro doing behind the scenes? I really haven't seen any articles and we (I believe) incorrectly believe that the Metro "apps" aren't running unless they're explicitly executed... Two big concerns for me...
1) How is my machine being slowed down (CPU cycles, disk I/O, etc.) and how much bandwidth is being wasted (especially if I don't get unlimited data) by Metro apps that are running "in the background"? This is really important at the server level--why do I need any apps running on a server--especially if it's running in a VM???
2) What information is being sent out the door about my usage to Microsoft and other entities (spyware), especially if those apps came preloaded with Windows 8.x / Server 2012 (base/R2)??? Again, servers are especially of concern--why should Microsoft or anyone else know how I'm using my server?
Numerous articles have said that Windows 8.x runs better/faster than Windows 7 on all kinds of hardware (even using less memory), but I can't see how this is possible given the concerns above...
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
What title bar? I haven't seen any clue that the top of the app is something special that you can grab onto... Just another example backing up your point about it being hidden. It's not even in Microsoft's own tutorial for using windows 8.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
So, the argument is that there's no clean way to accommodate casual user and power user workflows on the same desktop? Wait, tell that to my cairo dock and GNOME Do running on the XFCE desktop that my wife also uses (and believe me, if ever there was a wider chasm between power and casual user within one marriage, it would have likely triggered the implosion of the universe).
... namely, to claw their way into a 30% cut on apps. Mark these words - very soon, MS will introduce a way for desktop, non-Metro apps to be distributed via the app store, downloaded from a Metro interface. I wouldn't even be surprised if they offer a way to configure it as "mandatory", the only way to install desktop apps (for the protection of users, natch). Then the underlying purpose for the otherwise-ridiculous inclusion of Metro on Server 2012 will become clear.
I think the reality this totally-free-to-say-what-he-wants MS employee is not mentioning is that MS has company-strategic user-hostile motives for Metro
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
"your computer illiterate little sister".....
What makes you think that little sisters are more computer illiterate than little brothers? Sexist much, Jacob Miller?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Powershell is a BSD pipelined interface with all the lovely syntax of Visual Basic oriented around objects in layers all the way down.
It is like an onion, you keep peeling back the layers, and each one makes you want to cry more.
Use the best tool for the job. My personal setup is Windows for desktops (I think windows handles multiple monitors better than osx does), OSX for laptops (Apple's hardware is just so much better for portables), and linux for servers. I'm currently typing this on my Macbook Air. Definitely agree with you about dev tools on windows though. If you aren't bought into the .net stack, it's a bitch. For any web dev I'd recommend OSX or Linux. I'm a huge vim guy, so using windows and just ssh'ing into my linux boxes works great for me. (here).
He must have multiple personality disorder. That comment makes so much sense ... and yet his actual Reddit post is so absent of logic ...
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
The first time I had to use Windows 8 it was at a hotel and I was trying to print a PDF. I had to give up... Metro is the worst interface ever. I'm sure if you had a day long training explaining where you randomly move your mouse to so buttons appear it might be usable, but seriously... I'd rather use DOS. I mean if I can only use one application at a time, where is the advantage?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
This works for both the power user and the casual user. Sit down to the Windows 8 computer. Make sure you have a Windows 7/Mac OS/Linux computer next to you. Now the moment you get confused about the Windows 8 screen, go to your other computer and click Google. Then type how to ....
That is how I do it for Win 8 and Server 2012, and I have been using Microsoft since DOS 1.0 days.
I go out of my way to complicate the simple things, so that I can simplify the complicated things.
It is worth pointing out that all developers are power users, and will write applications first for themselves unless they are paid to do otherwise. The reason Windows is so popular is the sheer number of applications available for it. Once the "newbie" interface is segregated from the "power user" interface, there will be a lot fewer applications written for the former due to everyone but the big companies leaving for more useful environments. Fewer applications, and the unlikelihood of anybody writing any anytime soon, is what is killing Metro. If you aren't selling to developers first, you will lose - nobody buys Windows to run Windows.
There's no reason not to have 2 disjoint desktops - one cutesy and one "srs bsns". Have them both available everywhere, but make the default appropriate for the platform. If I really want Metro on a server or workstation, I can enable that feature (but for goodness sake make it go away by default). If I want a real UI on a tablet, say I've attached a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, I should be able to make that switch, but I'd want to go back to Metro for mobile use.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There are now two kinds of people in the world: Casual and Professional, so sayeth the misguided spokesman for Microsoft, who hasn't got a single CLUE about users!
To suggest that I am a "casual" user because I have a smartphone, or tablet, and my home network has two servers, several users, and we transact a lot of business on-line is to miss the entire point: It's the MEDIUM that should dictate the interface, not the PERSON. (See "I am multitudes...").
Sure, I want users on a smartphone, whether they have 50 years' experience, or one weeks', to access a website and satisfy their needs. But, to then demand that those of us who BUILD those systems should be strapped to the same brain-dead interface is the height of arrogance.
I don't want to be constrained by something like the Metro interface on a tablet; I want to have that OPTION! An option that Microsoft deems, in it's dismissive way, I'm not QUALIFIED to have anything else.
It's as if General Motors decided that engines should only be in vehicles that are used in commerce, and all the rest of us need to be restricted to tricycles which we must pedal, no matter the distance.
It is a marketing failure of stupendous proportions, and is evidenced in the pathetic sales figures for everything since Windows XP.
Just one geek's opinion.
Nah, they're going to double down on the cloud thing. Expect more and more core OS functionality to drift away into the fluffy little cloud, with an optional, but expensive option to "run your own cloud" for those recalcitrant privacy advocates who don't want practically all their information stored "securely" in some huge corporate data center in Montana. Win 8 already has their stupid little Microsoft Account which you can use to "... get apps from the Windows Store, back up all your important data and files using free cloud storage, and keep all your favorite stuff—devices, photos, friends, games, settings, music, and so on—up to date and in sync." So Cloud (implied), Cloud (explicit), Cloud (implied). Don't worry though, just like a real cloud your files and information are just so many water droplets in a swirling mass, so it isn't likely you will be personally targeted! The crackers will just take ALL of it! No worries!
Personally, I can't wait for Cloud printing, where your document goes out to the internet, then back to your printer, unless your internet access is out for some reason, then you're hosed. Rah rah cloud!!
Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
The quote is out of context, and was part of a larger list of users. On its own it does seem negative - here's my full quote:
Metro is a content consumption space. 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.
The word you are looking for is "iPad".
I am anarch of all I survey.