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Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

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

#121

Post by userbinator »

rvba wrote: post #58
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…

Why the taskbar groups same programs (you can still turn it off) but then does not allow you to have them ungrouped completely - and shown in the order you opened them. They dont understand that someone can have few spreadsheets and few PDFs open?

Or for that matter, why they removed the option to show the text labels, which is even more important once you have more than a single file open.

They dont understand that someone can have few spreadsheets and few PDFs open?

Treat everyone like an idiot and they'll become idiots.

Idiots are more likely to be persuaded in the "right" direction and milked for profit.

Some of those idiots then get jobs designing UI, and the cycle repeats.

...or at least that's my theory of what's happening.

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

#122

Post by TeMPOraL »

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.

> 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.

More importantly, they're in a school system - meeting with other kids their age 5+ days a week, and sharing their discoveries with each other. It takes one kid to figure a new interaction out for the knowledge to quickly spread.

Adults tend to have a slower-working gossip network, plus there's more of an associated stigma (or at least the fear of it) of being seen as the dummy who can't figure things out.

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

#123

Post by pavo-etc »

kccqzy wrote: post #98
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…

Snapchat ushered in the era of undiscoverable UIs. There were other apps that did that, but Snapchat was the most prominent. Snapchat introduced the idea that holding down the shutter button in photo capture mode should be capturing a video. Unlike any other camera apps on mobile where video capture is a separate mode readily seen in the UI, Snapchat made it undiscoverable. Snapchat also pioneered the idea that doubl…

To be fair to Snapchat, their camera interface does also have a button to switch cameras. The double tab is just a shortcut. Other apps that have aped this interface also have a button to switch cameras (e.g. Instagram).

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

#124

Post by TeMPOraL »

panzi wrote: post #101
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…

I somewhere heard/read someone say that gesture based interfaces are the new CLI (in terms of discoverability).

I'd wish. What's the gesture for "apropos"?

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

#125

Post by TeMPOraL »

bluedino wrote: post #85
warning26 wrote: post #8

I was playing with a Win98 computer the other day, and it is amazing how well most of the UX has held up even now. And it's so fast , especially considering the limitations of the hardware it was running on. Really interesting seeing some of the design process that resulted in it.

It was fast on say, 300mhz and faster hardware, but while watching a video where Windows 95 was running on a 486, I remembered how you used to be able to see individual UI elements being drawn on the screen piece by piece.

> while watching a video where Windows 95 was running on a 486, I remembered how you used to be able to see individual UI elements being drawn on the screen piece by piece.

This is pretty much the modern experience with web SPAs, except the hardware can hardly be blamed anymore.

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

#126

Post by xen2xen1 »

Aeolun wrote: post #117
_trampeltier wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now every step is full of dark pattern. Just like you wanna save a file in office. If you don't want store it in the cloud, there is always a step more. Also with the free One Drive and store it automaticly somewhere, I helped recently a friend (no computer guy), there are files just everywhere, some in the cloud some there and some somewhere else. Todays Windows is just hostile to non tech people, even to tech peopl…

Honestly, I consider myself quite tech savvy (programmer right?) but I cannot for the life of me figure out all the different locations you can store files any more. Especially my iPhone is a horror in this regard, but over the years I’ve used so many different forms of cloud storage everything is just spread around everywhere. I think I copied everything to my local disk as well, but it’s 20 years of my life, so I’m…

Bucket list: 1. Move everything to one cloud or local storage, make it searchable and organized.

Nah, won't even happen when I'm dead or about dead, or by the time I'm dead.

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

#127

Post by xen2xen1 »

adrian_b wrote: post #71
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many dos programs with a gui had all the same menus and fields before Windows. They just ran one at a time.

I still believe that the file manager XTree for MS-DOS had the best user interface of any file manager that I have ever used, in Windows, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux or MacOS, allowing one to perform any task with a minimum of key presses. It already had separate histories for each text field of the user interface, in which items could be made persistent. Even today, most programs with GUIs have much more poorly im…

Oh dear lord, Xtree? That's a name I've not heard in some time..

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

#128

Post by kristopolous »

bluedino wrote: post #85
warning26 wrote: post #8

I was playing with a Win98 computer the other day, and it is amazing how well most of the UX has held up even now. And it's so fast , especially considering the limitations of the hardware it was running on. Really interesting seeing some of the design process that resulted in it.

It was fast on say, 300mhz and faster hardware, but while watching a video where Windows 95 was running on a 486, I remembered how you used to be able to see individual UI elements being drawn on the screen piece by piece.

reminds me of a parody of "killing me softly" from the era. "Killing my software with windows": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXYFowc1AlY

"8 megs is recommended but I've got only 5"

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

#129

Post by xen2xen1 »

adrian_b wrote: post #71
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many dos programs with a gui had all the same menus and fields before Windows. They just ran one at a time.

I still believe that the file manager XTree for MS-DOS had the best user interface of any file manager that I have ever used, in Windows, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux or MacOS, allowing one to perform any task with a minimum of key presses. It already had separate histories for each text field of the user interface, in which items could be made persistent. Even today, most programs with GUIs have much more poorly im…

I might try unixtree.org..

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

#130

Post by rewgs »

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…

That mobile app you mentioned was Snapchat right? Worst discoverability of any mobile app I’ve ever used.
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