The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#141

Post by kettlecorn » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 7:25 AM UTC

linguae wrote: post #15

Steve Jobs is famous for his 1996 quote about Microsoft not having taste ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiOzGI4MqSU ). I disagree; as much as I love the classic Mac OS and Jobs-era Mac OS X, and despite my feelings about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior, 1995-2000 Microsoft's user interfaces were quite tasteful, in my opinion, and this was Microsoft's most tasteful period. I have fond memories of Windows 95/NT 4/…

Microsoft has for short periods in its history put out good UX and design, but fundamentally the company doesn't defend taste and design.

The company treats good design almost like a marketing expense only worth doing if it creates short term brand perception changes. Throughout its history it's had moments of great design when a particular leader creates a culture that promotes it, but inevitably someone higher up rotates out that leader and the culture resets.

That has been the pattern with Windows, Zune / Windows Phone, Xbox, Surface, and many other consumer facing products.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#142

Post by tavavex » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 7:56 AM UTC

Sharlin wrote: post #132

f1shy wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing I’m still trying to understand who came with the idea of charging the mouse from under, instead of from a position that would allow to use the mouse while charging…

Textbook case of form over function. Either an engineering constraint forced by the design and deemed an acceptable trade-off by higher-ups, or maybe more likely, the designer just thought a visible charging port would’ve ruined their design.

While the exact reason has never been documented, if you look at that mouse's design, you'll see that its first generation had a regular battery compartment on the bottom. When gen 2 arrived, they fully reused the same shell and only replaced that bottom part to now be an integrated battery with a charging port instead of a compartment for AAs. Moving the charging port would've required a brand new design, since every edge of the mouse tapers way too much for a port to be placed anywhere else. They would also probably need to change more of the internal structure, as opposed to just swapping a battery module and changing the bottom lid. In this case the constraint seems to just be about functionality and manufacturing. Apple has made many controversial design decisions that have no functional justifications in the past, yet people keep bringing up the mouse.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#143

Post by benrutter » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 7:58 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #36

okanat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon Ribbon also has a similar research behind it, just like Windows 95. For what they designed it, allowing beginners to discover all the functionality that's available, it works perfectly. I think most of the complaints from the tech circles are completely unfounded in reality. Many non-tech people and younger ones actually prefer using Ribbon. I also like it since it is very tastefully ma…

> I think most of the complaints from the tech circles are completely unfounded in reality. Many non-tech people and younger ones actually prefer using Ribbon. Well, yes, but that observation doesn't prove the point you think it does. People who were highly experienced with previous non-ribbon versions of Office, disliked the ribbon, because the ribbon is essentially a "tutorial mode" for Office. The ribbon reduces c…

I really like this take! A couple years ago I wrote a throwaway blog about learning curves in user design[0] but the thought has stayed with me a lot since then.

It's especially tricky because things are contextual. I use Helix as an editor which has a steeper learning curve than, say, VSCode, but is way faster once you're up and running with it.

But by contrast, I also really like LazyGit, which is a lot quicker to learn than the git CLI, but since all I do is branch, commit an push, makes my workflow a lot more efficient.

There's such a complex series of trade offs, especially if products want to balance bith. I always feel a little sad how much interfaces have skewed towards user friendliness over power. Sometimes it feels like we've ended up in a world of hurdy-gurdies with no violins.

[0] https://benrutter.codeberg.page/site/posts/learning-curves/

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#144

Post by quietbritishjim » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:04 AM UTC

zzo38computer wrote: post #118

beloch wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to go back and use Win 3.1 or MacOS 7.x to realize what a leap forward Win95 was. MacOS 7.x didn't even have preemptive multitasking! The start menu and task bar made their debut and immediately anchored the whole UI. Since then, Windows has made incremental advances (with the occasional step backwards), but no change has been nearly so radical. OS X would not have been possible without the influence of w…

I have used both Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Windows 95 does have some significant benefits (e.g. you can start Windows programs from the DOS prompt (I seem to remember that you cannot do this in Windows 3.1 and in Windows 95 you can, but I am not sure if I remember correctly), and the WIN+R shortcut, and some others), but also many problems (although some can be avoided by changing stuff in the registry; I had done…

You could change the option to hide file extensions in the explorer settings windows; no registry tweak was needed.

Not wanting spaces in file names is certainly a bold opinion! I think you'll find yourself in a very small minority there.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#145

Post by throw_away_623 » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:07 AM UTC

tavavex wrote: post #142

Sharlin wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Textbook case of form over function. Either an engineering constraint forced by the design and deemed an acceptable trade-off by higher-ups, or maybe more likely, the designer just thought a visible charging port would’ve ruined their design.

While the exact reason has never been documented, if you look at that mouse's design, you'll see that its first generation had a regular battery compartment on the bottom. When gen 2 arrived, they fully reused the same shell and only replaced that bottom part to now be an integrated battery with a charging port instead of a compartment for AAs. Moving the charging port would've required a brand new design, since ever…

The reason people talk about the mouse is that it's one of the worst ideas they ever had.

At the time, I remember someone claimed that the reason was that they were afraid people could leave it plugged in for convenience. Apple thought that would lead to a worse experience because their mouse was designed to be used wirelessly. I think it was actually more related to aesthetic "icks" by the designers, because people would have disconnected the cable if it was in the way.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#146

Post by VorpalWay » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:07 AM UTC

idle_zealot wrote: post #112

derefr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think most of the complaints from the tech circles are completely unfounded in reality. Many non-tech people and younger ones actually prefer using Ribbon. Well, yes, but that observation doesn't prove the point you think it does. People who were highly experienced with previous non-ribbon versions of Office, disliked the ribbon, because the ribbon is essentially a "tutorial mode" for Office. The ribbon reduces c…

> I think apps like Photoshop have since figured out what people really want here: a UI layout ("workspace") selector, offering different UI layouts for new users ("Basic" layout) vs. experienced users ("Full" layout); and even different UI layouts for users with different high-level use-cases such that they have a known set of applicable user-stories. A Ribbon is perfect for the "Basic" layout; but in a "Full" layou…

I think PrusaSlicer does this in a reasonable way. (Context: this is software for preparing files for 3D printers.)

It has three modes: Simple, Advanced, Expert. They are all the same UI design, all it does is hide some less common settings to not overwhelm users. Each level is also associated with a colour, and next to each setting is a small dot with that colour: this allows you to quickly scan for the more common settings even if you showed all of them at Expert. At Expert there are easily over a thousand different settings organised into a 2-level hierarchy.

Docs on this feature: https://help.prusa3d.com/article/simple-advanced-expert-mode...

I wrote a blog post that has some screenshots from the settings pages (5th image for example): https://vorpal.se/posts/2025/jun/23/3d-printing-with-unconve...

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#147

Post by Ylpertnodi » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:08 AM UTC

catskull wrote: post #64

Microsoft dumped $100 million on this huge marketing campaign with a simple question: “Where do you want to go today?” I love it. It really captures the seemingly endless new digital world that was emerging in the 90’s and in many ways is still evolving 30 years later. I love the promo video they made too: https://youtu.be/KNLDLVJZx0o I love it so much I wrote a blog post inspired by it: https://catskull.net/where-do…

> Where do you want to go today?

Not fussed. It's my information that i can't keep close to home.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#148

Post by shevy-java » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:23 AM UTC

Hmm. I like the simplicity compared to Win10 or the abomination that is Win11. But it is hard to compare 1:1 because the modern UI also improved in some ways, and degraded in other ways. Microsoft does not really seem to understand how to design UIs anymore though, or they simply don't care. I am using Linux most of the time so I don't quite depend on Microsoft anymore, but when I use a MS-specific UI I often wonder why some things are simply not thought through at all. The ribbon interface is an example; my brain can not deal with dynamic willy-nilly changes. It just adds cognitive load. Why isn't it easier to modify the classic interface? In modern HTML/CSS we can filter away things we don't need; I do that with ublock origin all of the time.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#149

Post by VorpalWay » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:25 AM UTC

lunar_rover wrote: post #71

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the topic of flat design specifically, developers are likely just as culpable. Back when it was just starting to catch on, by my observation some of the quickest to adopt it were solo developers because it's way easier to build a passable looking app with flat UI since that doesn't require any design talent.

A passable looking modern flat UI has a lot behind it, just like skeuomorphism and anything in between. Unless something like https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.12.0/spectacle-noti... is what you consider to be passable looking of course.

That looks perfectly functional to me? It only looks a bit ugly because the screenshot appears to have been of a very small part of the screen that got blurry when it was blown up to a larger size.

I'll take function over for every day. (I daily drive KDE, it works fine and doesn't get in my way. Most of the time I'm either in my editor or the terminal emulator anyway.)

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#150

Post by glenstein » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:38 AM UTC

linguae wrote: post #15

Steve Jobs is famous for his 1996 quote about Microsoft not having taste ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiOzGI4MqSU ). I disagree; as much as I love the classic Mac OS and Jobs-era Mac OS X, and despite my feelings about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior, 1995-2000 Microsoft's user interfaces were quite tasteful, in my opinion, and this was Microsoft's most tasteful period. I have fond memories of Windows 95/NT 4/…

Amazing you say that because I almost posted that comment in response to that same clip in another HN thread, for the same reason. There's a tight integration between style, performance, and design on the Windows 95 and 98 that then now feels more like "true" Windows than anything since.

I think Jobs was right about Microsoft later on, but they certainly had taste during their peak.