Thoughts about Interface design and operating systems

Incoming nerd rant.

M$ getting a lil desperate

I dunno how it is in the USA, but here in Portugal, I rarely see an ad on TV for consoles, videogames and operating systems. up to a month or 2 ago, i could count those on 1 hand. I was a bit stunned about M$ actually having ads on everywhere here about Windows 8. Saw it on TV a few times, local stores where having Windows 8 themed sales, stuff like that.

I get the distinct feel M$ really wants people to get Win8, but as I read, the ads don't reflect how Win8 is at all.

I have an android tablet, and if I knew how horrible they were to use, I probably wouldn't had bought it. I'm not gonna get into how shitty it is to use your fingers as controls, but it is.

From the Win8 ads, I had the feel that they wanted to make a tablet oriented interface, which is a horrible idea because those interfaces are the way they are because of limitations, not because they're awesome to use.

But, I read that you can actually get win8 to look just like win7. I didn't know that til I read it online, because from the ads I was under the impression that it was a horribly simplified piece of shit used by casuals jocks.

Did they convince people? I like to hope they didn't. Saw this earlier on a blog:




Made me smile.

Rules for interfaces

The thing with M$ is that even though they make operating systems, and the user interface is a very important part of it, it's something they systematically change for the worse.

I had a class in college that touched briefly on user interface design, it's not as easy as you'd think, but there are basic rules to it.

The goals of a good interface are being easy to use and being efficient.

What that means is that:

• The options should be grouped in a way that makes sense under a menu/tab/other that has a label that clearly describes the scope of the options within it so that they're easy to find.
• There shouldn't be an overwhelming amount of features/options on the screen at once. If there are too many options, then it's likely they should be split to another menu/tab.Do not overwhelm the user.
• Frequently used features need to be accessible quicker than ones that rarely are. This is done by making it so that less clicks are required to use the frequent options, and in case of too many options, the lesser used ones can be sorted in a subgroup.

There's many more details to it, like being intuitive, consistent, etc. but those things tend to happen naturally through testing.

Now, that's sort of a dilemma, and that's the part that doesn't occur to people until they make an interface themselves.

• You can be one of those people that hates submenus and make an interface where every single feature on it is a button on a toolbar, but if there's many features, you'll end up with something that looks like the an airplane's control panel, aka a clusterfuck.
• Or you can be one of those that likes everything neat and tidy and creates tons of submenus that actually drastically slow down the user and make stuff that's used often require several clicks. Doesn't sound like it's so bad, but it it's something that done hundreds of times a day, it'll piss the user off.
  

You want it to be easy/fast to use, but you want all the options well organized too.

What makes an interface good?

The big thing my teacher stressed at the time though, was:

The only people who can say if an interface is good or not, are the users, NEVER the developer.

After all, the users are the ones that will end up using the product and put up with it. My teacher added that coders tend to make the most horrible interfaces that only themselves could use efficiently.

That's possibly the part of software design that requires the most input from the user. And the more time the user has to spend using the software, the more valuable his opinion is.

So how is M$ failing at it?

M$ breaks every single rule of interface design every time they revamp something. But I think I can sort of understand why:

• They believe that existing Windows users will just keep using Windows regardless because of how jarring it is to switch to an entirely different OS.
• They want to attract new people to Windows, their marketing seems mainly aimed at casuals, people who don't normally use computers.

However, they're not really having any sucess with either.

There's an irony here.

• Switching Windows version IS jarring as fuck as it is, and getting worse every time.
• Casual users don't have high end computers, and they actually do find win XP simpler to use, so they'll often use that.
• More hardcore users detest the newer versions of Windows because it requires an adaptation period, which will affect their productivity, and the interface is oversimplified requiring way more clicks in general to do anything, so even after you adapted to it, the interface just isn't as efficient.

I actually have seen how much better the memory management is under win7 compared to winXP, but, The interface would slow me down more than what I'd get from the improvements.

Of course, some people seem to like the newer versions for some reason. But 95% of all people are fucking idiots on any given subject, so who cares.

What's the solution?

Ultimately, whoever decides if the interface is good or not is the user, but there's many of them and all with different tastes, right? So you'd think you can please everyone, but you're sort of wrong.

This is the main thing about people who defend newer Windows versions:

"Well, you probably didn't like Windows XP's interface at first either, but you got used to it"

To which I reply:

"No you dumb shit, You didn't have to because you could customize it to fit your needs. Win7 will absolutely NOT let me do that!"

(I think I'm paraphrasing a convo I've had before)

And yes I know, there's some tiny things that you can customize on win7, but none of them really help me improve my productivity with it.

Here's something else a lot of people disliked:

The Firefox menu.

Most people I know hated it. I think it's retarded because it's designed to save the 20 pixels that the menu would normally take in exhange for an extra click and a lot of navigation through sub menus.

It's especially stupid in an age where monitor are so fucking big. See back in the day where 1024x768 was the most common resolution, maybe? but now? No. it's dumb and 15 years too late.

However!

You can disable it and get the old menu back. and really, that's all i ask for. The more you allow people to customize an interface, the better it will automatically be.

Just let people pick what they want, it's fucking simple.

The OS I wish would get finished

My personal hope is ReactOS.

It's basically an OS that looks and feels like Windows. It's made from the ground up to support any software that runs on Windows, as well as drivers.

It's literally a direct alternative to Windows, except it's meant to be better and won't force you to change OS every 2 years.

Obviously, M$ tried to have them shut down, but since the thing is entirely coded in Linux and does not use a single line of code from Windows, they can't.