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How Microsoft misunderstands the concept of user research (& how Apple doesn’t)

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Re: How Microsoft misunderstands the concept of user research (& how Apple doesn’t)

#21

Post by jmjerlecki »

kenjackson wrote: post #7

Actually this blog post I think is a perfect example of how "designers" in the large don't get it. The ribbon was largely maligned for Office too by the web intelligencia, but as someone who spent time in the enterprise both consulting and selling apps, the ribbon is generally loved by its users. The people who hate the ribbon are the people who use OSX. Try giving Word 2003 to anyone who has spent any time with Word…

I think the OP brings up a good point here in that Mac OS X users and Windows users are two very different types of users who both use their computers in different ways. I imagine the Mac OS X user has a higher base level of skills than the average Windows user (just based on a shear numbers game Mac OS X 10% of market, Windows 90%).

Re: How Microsoft misunderstands the concept of user research (& how Apple doesn’t)

#22

Post by steve8918 »

mstroeck wrote: post #11
steve8918 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently started using a Mac about 6 months ago, and I'm surprised at how terrible some of the user experiences are. The Base OS is nice, but there's a lot to be desired by many of their applications. Finder is probably my #1 biggest complaint, because finding files is so hard to do with it.

Have you heard of Spotlight? It's the button at the upper right of your screen. It indexes all your files. If you are talking about files that belong to the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X: that's what locate is for, for example - try typing that into a Terminal window.

I think this only works if you know which file you are looking for.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but when I start up Finder, there's no way for me to start from the root directory. So already, I'm not sure exactly where I am. Then when I start drilling down into directories, etc, there's only one of 4 views that will give me some sort of indication where I am, but not really. I have to concatenate all the directory names together in my head, as well as scroll left and right depending on how deep I am. I can't just cut and paste a location into the terminal window, and I find this really really annoying. It almost verges on useless to me.

Re: How Microsoft misunderstands the concept of user research (& how Apple doesn’t)

#23

Post by spooneybarger »

mkr-hn wrote: post #19
spooneybarger wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'web intelligencia'? i think you could have made your point without a cheap us against them anti intellectualism aside.

The submission itself is "us vs. them." What did you expect?

I think web intelligentsia and putting designers in quotes is way beyond anything in the submission itself, but on these things everyone's mileage will probably vary. That aside, I find your argument to rather odd. I would extrapolate from that general idea of responding in kind that if someone is rude to you on someplace like HN, that it would be reasonable to expect rudeness in return, perhaps even that is justified.

Re: How Microsoft misunderstands the concept of user research (& how Apple doesn’t)

#24

Post by mstroeck »

steve8918 wrote: post #22
mstroeck wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of Spotlight? It's the button at the upper right of your screen. It indexes all your files. If you are talking about files that belong to the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X: that's what locate is for, for example - try typing that into a Terminal window.

I think this only works if you know which file you are looking for. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but when I start up Finder, there's no way for me to start from the root directory. So already, I'm not sure exactly where I am. Then when I start drilling down into directories, etc, there's only one of 4 views that will give me some sort of indication where I am, but not really. I have to concatenate all the directo…

Wow, are you sure you're talking about the Mac OS X Finder :-) ?

-) This option makes navigation much easier, I don't know why it's not turned on by default:

http://macs.about.com/od/usingyourmac/qt/findertip1.htm

-) You can drag any file or folder into a Terminal window - simply drag and drop. You can also simply "Cmd+C" a file, go to Terminal and do "Cmd+V". The absolute path of the copied file will be inserted.

Re: How Microsoft misunderstands the concept of user research (& how Apple doesn’t)

#25

Post by nchlswu »

This analysis has very little to do with User Research. The analysis is all about a fundamental difference in the approach that Microsoft and Apple take to file management.

Microsoft's solution may not be "elegant" or changing their current paradigm, but a paradigm shift is very difficult, especially when you have to accomodate many legacy users. Microsoft's solution always looked (to me) like a decent incremental solution that would work for the Windows user base. What's wrong with that? It may not be as elegant as it can be, but it's definitely not as ugly as so many are making it out to be. And if it works, what's wrong with that?

Re: How Microsoft misunderstands the concept of user research (& how Apple doesn’t)

#26

Post by steve8918 »

mkr-hn wrote: post #20
steve8918 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's malicious, I think it's self-preservation. It's a fact that their innovation has been strangled because of their strategy to circle the wagons around Windows. Look at what happened once they gave their engineers some breathing space: they created Bing, which is seemingly decent. Also, X-box and especially the Kinnect. Microsoft CAN do innovative things, the only problem is their corporate culture t…

Have you used the ribbon interface in Office?

Yes, I use it at work (I use Office 2003 at home). I've grown up on 20 years of Microsoft Word (since Word 2.0 on DOS) so I'm very familiar with the menu system, and I know the features that I need. So Ribbon is annoying for me. I'm sure for new users it's not annoying at all, because it's all they know, and they might find the menu system hard to use.

Hence my point that for new users who tried to migrate to OpenOffice or Google Docs, they would find the menu interface unfamiliar and annoying. I think MacOS is annoying because I can only resize a Window from the bottom right-hand corner, but I'm told they changed that in Lion, which my guess is that it's to appease old farts like me that want to migrate to MacOS. So Apple is doing the reverse, which is to make their OS more palatable (but not completely change) for die-hard Windows users.

Re: How Microsoft misunderstands the concept of user research (& how Apple doesn’t)

#27

Post by pooriaazimi »

camtarn wrote: post #5

Okay, and once the users have found their documents in the beautiful Finder, what are they going to do with them? This seems to be another case of someone confusing attractiveness with usability. The article fails to explain why the author thinks that the Finder makes it easier and/or more obvious for users to figure out how to manipulate their files. What are the motivations and needs of these users (apart from 'I w…

Finder is not all about beauty. What I like most about Finder (which makes me cry every time I have to use Windows) is QuickLook. It's SO much easier to quickly glance at a document than anything WE has to offer.

I personally hate ribbons, but I think for the average user they are great, and much easier to use. So I'm not defending Apple here, I'm just saying that It's not all about beauty or slickness; Finder is also powerful, but in its own ways (only if it had tabs...)

Re: How Microsoft misunderstands the concept of user research (& how Apple doesn’t)

#28

Post by masklinn »

kaffesump wrote: post #17
kenjackson wrote: post #7

Actually this blog post I think is a perfect example of how "designers" in the large don't get it. The ribbon was largely maligned for Office too by the web intelligencia, but as someone who spent time in the enterprise both consulting and selling apps, the ribbon is generally loved by its users. The people who hate the ribbon are the people who use OSX. Try giving Word 2003 to anyone who has spent any time with Word…

I just had to agree with this comment - Finder might just be one of the worst parts of OSX. In my opinion the Ribbon UI may be one of the biggest innovations in UI Microsoft did during the 00's (Metro UI = 10's?). The amount of space that the Ribbon UI provides for the main window (way more rows than the old UI) and the few amounts of clicks needed to perform your actions make it crazy efficient!

> In my opinion the Ribbon UI may be one of the biggest innovations in UI Microsoft did during the 00's

While I agree, I'm not sure it's really a good idea for a program as conceptually simple as the explorer. The Ribbon was designed to clarify and simplify very complex interfaces and menu hierarchy (Office's), in order to make features both more visible and more accessible.

In Explorer, it seems to become little more than a glorified toolbar with HUGE buttons.

Definitely not sold on W8's explorer, especially not since I find 7's to already be a downgrade from XP's

Re: How Microsoft misunderstands the concept of user research (& how Apple doesn’t)

#29

Post by rplst8 »

He misses the point entirely. If one wants to do in Windows what he suggests is so integral to Finder one uses the "recent files" link in the Start menu or any open file dialog. The purpose of the original blog post was to improve what Windows Explorer was designed to do - manage large sets of files and folders.

Re: How Microsoft misunderstands the concept of user research (& how Apple doesn’t)

#30

Post by camtarn »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #27
camtarn wrote: post #5

Okay, and once the users have found their documents in the beautiful Finder, what are they going to do with them? This seems to be another case of someone confusing attractiveness with usability. The article fails to explain why the author thinks that the Finder makes it easier and/or more obvious for users to figure out how to manipulate their files. What are the motivations and needs of these users (apart from 'I w…

Finder is not all about beauty. What I like most about Finder (which makes me cry every time I have to use Windows) is QuickLook. It's SO much easier to quickly glance at a document than anything WE has to offer. I personally hate ribbons, but I think for the average user they are great, and much easier to use. So I'm not defending Apple here, I'm just saying that It's not all about beauty or slickness; Finder is als…

QuickLook is a brilliant power user tool which I wish Explorer had - but, like many of Finder's features, it's hardly discoverable without either hearing about it first, or being willing to press random keys to see what they do (which many computer users are very unwilling to do.)
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