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Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

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Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#41

Post by mananaysiempre »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #14

I would love to see a similar paper by the Windows 11 design team. The 95 group seemed to be very responsive to how users were using or failing to use the OS. I've been on Win11 for a few months, and I'm confused who these changes are for. It could be that the Eternal September means things have to be dumbed down and locked down, catering to the least capable users. Or maybe design decisions are being made at a highe…

This is not exactly the document you’re asking for, but I think the clearest explanation of the origin of modern Microsoft flatness back in the Windows Phone 7 days is “How print design is the future of interaction” (2011) [1], by the late Mike Kruzeniski.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120314071640/http://kruzeniski..., seemingly missed by HN at the time in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3301723 (6 points, 0 comments).

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#42

Post by nixass »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #14

I would love to see a similar paper by the Windows 11 design team. The 95 group seemed to be very responsive to how users were using or failing to use the OS. I've been on Win11 for a few months, and I'm confused who these changes are for. It could be that the Eternal September means things have to be dumbed down and locked down, catering to the least capable users. Or maybe design decisions are being made at a highe…

I always remember this post when reading complaints about Windows design https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30019307

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#43

Post by bojan »

Kranar wrote: post #36
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #15

I think windows 95/98 era was the peak of UI discoverability. As a kid, I and my friends could learn and explore how a program worked just by expanding all the menus and opening the various dialogs. Dialogs which were filled with fields and their descriptions! Before then, it was the world of DOS and you had to know what you were doing ahead of time. And now, UIs are dynamic, initially hiding stuff from the user and…

My daughter does the same thing with modern UIs and doesn't have much of an issue. I don't think many kids these days are struggling to identify various functionality of the multitude of apps available. Sure UIs are different today and maybe to us older people it's byzantine, but the newer generation of users seem to be able to pick up quite easily. I wouldn't be surprised if when we were kids, there were older peopl…

Precisely. As a kid you have time to go through all the menus, read the hints, and experiment. Kids today have time to try out all the gestures on all the apps they care about.

They might end up having issues adapting to desktop enterprise UI when they enter workforce, but that's another story.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#44

Post by willnonya »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #14

I would love to see a similar paper by the Windows 11 design team. The 95 group seemed to be very responsive to how users were using or failing to use the OS. I've been on Win11 for a few months, and I'm confused who these changes are for. It could be that the Eternal September means things have to be dumbed down and locked down, catering to the least capable users. Or maybe design decisions are being made at a highe…

There have been several times when windows made changes to accommodate hardware that didn't catch up as fast as expected. With windows 11 it feels like they're trying to design an os for the hardware of yesteryear instead.

If win11 were running on a surface duo or similar device it might make sense but on the desktop they should be embarrassed by the amount of software and tweaks people use just to make their software usable.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#45

Post by willnonya »

KronisLV wrote: post #35
cardanome wrote: post #12

Back then you could test your UI on people that were a completely blank slate, having possible never used a computer before. You could focus on making the best possible UI there is. Now, users come already with certain habits and expectations developed by years of of computer use. This means, even if you really cared about the user experience of your customers you would only be able to make incremental improvements t…

> This means, even if you really cared about the user experience of your customers you would only be able to make incremental improvements to the status quo or else be be rejected for being too different. Isn't this a good thing, though? Creating software that most current users out there can be easily onboarded with and be productive and familiar with quickly, without too much work put into it. I recently did an art…

The problems with using Linux generally aren't desktop environment issues but more the diskljpinted nature of Linux. XCFE is my preferred Linux desktop though, flexible without a lot of baggage.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#46

Post by agumonkey »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #15

I think windows 95/98 era was the peak of UI discoverability. As a kid, I and my friends could learn and explore how a program worked just by expanding all the menus and opening the various dialogs. Dialogs which were filled with fields and their descriptions! Before then, it was the world of DOS and you had to know what you were doing ahead of time. And now, UIs are dynamic, initially hiding stuff from the user and…

this era had one massive flaw: huge amount of side effects, you would have to guess what would be the impact of checking a radio button in some deep settings without any way to test most of the time.

the best UIs were reactive lazily rendered node-based UIs over non destructive operations, but mostly relegated to pro content creation (movies, music).

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#47

Post by snarfy »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #14

I would love to see a similar paper by the Windows 11 design team. The 95 group seemed to be very responsive to how users were using or failing to use the OS. I've been on Win11 for a few months, and I'm confused who these changes are for. It could be that the Eternal September means things have to be dumbed down and locked down, catering to the least capable users. Or maybe design decisions are being made at a highe…

> I make my living with .Net/C#/WPF, so great job Microsoft, I feel trapped rather than valued.

I'm in the same boat. Do you get to design your WPF UIs, or are they dictated to you by a UX designer? I hate the UIs I have to develop. I would never use them, but some PM insists they are good design, citing metrics from a broken feedback system that's been gamed to give PMs promotions over honest feedback. The designers don't use the software they are designing, but insist it is good design. Heck they are designing Windows software, using a Mac. Most users are held hostage. I'm convinced if there were actual competition these products would all fail.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#48

Post by willnonya »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #37
lucb1e wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the task bar grouping in Windows 7 that I've found most people actually don't prefer when you reveal that it's optional. A lot of people also like it, maybe as much as 40% or so, but when I look over someone's shoulder (who had been using 7 for ages already) and I wondered out loud how they manage to work with that task bar, they were usually happy to learn of a way to just see open programs instead of having this…

> except now the settings are all over the place On Windows 11, it's very rare to have to use the old Control Panel. It still exists for some uncommon settings, but nearly everything has been moved to the new settings. And everything is actually intelligently grouped. I only wish you could have multiple Settings windows open at once.

That's not really been my experience. I do agree about needing multiple settings windows opened at once, especially when one is already open and you need to open a seemingly unrelated screen and lose your place.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#49

Post by agumonkey »

bojan wrote: post #43
Kranar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter does the same thing with modern UIs and doesn't have much of an issue. I don't think many kids these days are struggling to identify various functionality of the multitude of apps available. Sure UIs are different today and maybe to us older people it's byzantine, but the newer generation of users seem to be able to pick up quite easily. I wouldn't be surprised if when we were kids, there were older peopl…

Precisely. As a kid you have time to go through all the menus, read the hints, and experiment. Kids today have time to try out all the gestures on all the apps they care about. They might end up having issues adapting to desktop enterprise UI when they enter workforce, but that's another story.

Fair point, that said, a swipe-era UI is still a wider surface to explore than old era, since anything is actionable and has more inputs than the usual 2 buttons * { click, dblclick } but I guess it doesn't make a difference for a kid.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#50

Post by willnonya »

lucb1e wrote: post #27
matsemann wrote: post #17

Too bad they didn't read these notes before gutting the taskbar in Win11. It's so unusable, so slow when you can't "ungroup" stuff. Made me actually reinstall and go back to Win10.

Or the task bar grouping in Windows 7 that I've found most people actually don't prefer when you reveal that it's optional. A lot of people also like it, maybe as much as 40% or so, but when I look over someone's shoulder (who had been using 7 for ages already) and I wondered out loud how they manage to work with that task bar, they were usually happy to learn of a way to just see open programs instead of having this…

Wi does 8 made sense to me the first time I picked up a surface pro or a windows phone.

I cannot think of anything good to say about it in any other context though.

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