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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?
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.
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.
I'm surprised they admit to being a 'UX designer'. They're so widely hated after the Gnome 3 and Metro debacles that, pretty soon, they'll have to claim they were playing piano in a brothel for those years to make their resume look more reputable.
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...
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.
"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
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?
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
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.
ah, but Metro is bad for non-power users too and they can't avoid using it either.
Its just bad all round.