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

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

#61

Post by pcurve »

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/…

What made system 7 and 8 worse in some respect was when it crashed, it crashed hard without warning

With windows the crash was progressive so you have time to save and prepare.

I also have fond memories of windows 2000. It was rock steady and polished. I preferred it over system 8 and even OS X which had to many Unix conventions.

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

#62

Post by pndy »

VerifiedReports wrote: post #8
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #4

I think Windows 95/2000 and the contemporary MacOS (including the then future MacOS X) have the best UI in everything I used in my 30+ years of tech life. I sincerely hope that one day we could go back to that road. If you want that achieved, please support me to join Apple/Microsoft to become the UI boss, fire all flat-design people and hire a small team to implement the older UI, then give a few passionate talks on…

Yep. I always cite XP as being Windows's peak, but I forgot that it shipped with their insulting Fisher-Price motif enabled by default. Step 1 was to switch the UI to "classic" (essentially Windows 95) mode, and all was well. Windows 95 is a great case study because with that release, Microsoft did more for GUIs than Apple did through the entire decade of the '90s... and beyond. All of it is now out the window (pun i…

XP in early betas released had that slightly upgraded 9x interface called Watercolor [1] and if they'd keep it, surely majority would pick it up over plastic Luna.

Early experiments with totally new theme were rather unpleasant [2] and Watercolor was abandoned in favor of more familiar 9x looking theme as an option. W11 still comes with that old 9x widgets look - slightly flattened because of that trend but it's still there buried beneath for compatibility reasons. And I'm pretty sure they won't escape with that like Apple did with Aqua away from Platinum.

[1] - https://betawiki.net/wiki/Watercolor

[2] - https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_XP_build_2416#Gallery

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

#63

Post by throwaway290 »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #59
throwaway290 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got no problem with that tiny LED or glowing apple logo personally But liquid glass and insane amount of bugs that arrived with it is killing me.

Likely you experienced later gens where they toned it down. ~2010 it was one of the brightest LEDs you could purchase. As in they literally put a torch LED on the all white Intel macbooks of the era and it would shine through the laptop bags, pulsating.

Maybe...

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

#64

Post by catskull »

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-you-want-to-go-today.html

Where do you want to go today?

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

#65

Post by gyomu »

WalterBright wrote: post #40

Any user interface designer should take a good look at the controls on a commercial airliner. An awful lot of effort goes into making an intuitive, effective user interface. I have disagreements with it, but there's no denying it's very well done. Designing a programming language is mostly about usability. I'll be giving a talk about that in April at Yale. It's a fun topic!

Ok, except operating a commercial airliner literally takes thousands of hours of training, requires an extremely detailed mental model for how air flight works, and heavily relies on external procedures like checklists to ensure safe operation.

And fatal accidents due to poorly thought out control systems do occur.

https://www.fastcompany.com/1669720/how-lousy-cockpit-design...

Also fwiw using the word "intuitive" is an instant sign of someone not being a great designer.

https://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html

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

#66

Post by coldfingerr »

Comdex 1996 DELL (or some company) exposed Windows 95 pcs for the public to mess with. Having used only 3.11 before, I was fascinated with the desktop and also felt it very strange that the contents of the UI were so minimal.

Of course I didnt discover anything else: I was afraid of clicking "Start", because I dindt know what that was that going to start, and the computer wasnt mine to brick.

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

#67

Post by hollandheese »

LtWorf wrote: post #44
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…

You have to use windows 95 with a computer from 1995 to realise how painfully slow it was compared to windows 3.

Windows 3.11 loads in less than a blink of an eye on my Pentium MMX, while Windows 98 takes at least a minute to boot. This is with a 8 GB CF card as the HDD too, so the I/O is going as fast as possible.

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

#68

Post by 1bpp »

gerdesj wrote: post #55
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll also give the opinion that Apple consistently creates some absolutely crap designs and when they do this, release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing they are instead met with applause on the "amazing design". It's a tiresome pattern repeated for decades now. eg. The 'breathing status light' that lit up the room at night due to extreme brightness which meant every ma…

I recently had to get printing working for a family member on an Apple tablet. I'm not an Apple jockey so it took me a while to sort out and I've being using computers since 1980 and consulting since 1995. You tap an icon that looks like the outline of a rectangle with an arrow pointing up. Then you tap the name of the printer. Then you tap another rectangle with an up arrow and then tap the word "Print". I may have…

Android uses the 'share' icon to represent the same thing, which is maybe a little more legible, but still feels like shoving way too many actions under a confusing modal they shouldn't be in. Even worse when apps implement a custom share dialog.

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

#69

Post by analog31 »

pcurve wrote: post #61
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/…

What made system 7 and 8 worse in some respect was when it crashed, it crashed hard without warning With windows the crash was progressive so you have time to save and prepare. I also have fond memories of windows 2000. It was rock steady and polished. I preferred it over system 8 and even OS X which had to many Unix conventions.

I once proved to my boss that a font was crashing System 7. And we always unplugged the network when we didn’t need it because a crash on one Mac could bring down every other Mac on the network.

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

#70

Post by crooked-v »

gerdesj wrote: post #55
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll also give the opinion that Apple consistently creates some absolutely crap designs and when they do this, release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing they are instead met with applause on the "amazing design". It's a tiresome pattern repeated for decades now. eg. The 'breathing status light' that lit up the room at night due to extreme brightness which meant every ma…

I recently had to get printing working for a family member on an Apple tablet. I'm not an Apple jockey so it took me a while to sort out and I've being using computers since 1980 and consulting since 1995. You tap an icon that looks like the outline of a rectangle with an arrow pointing up. Then you tap the name of the printer. Then you tap another rectangle with an up arrow and then tap the word "Print". I may have…

It's supposed to be the "Share" menu, but that stopped meaning anything very fast because they just crammed everything into it for lack of other UX for system services.

Macs have the problem multiple times over, because now they have the normal menu bar and toolbar, and a Share menu that just gets arbitrary stuff dumped into by App Store apps, and the Services menu that shows up in some contexts but not others, and the Quick Actions menu that shows up in some contexts but not others, and some services can just add things directly to right click menus.

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