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This man says ......
https://www.quora.com/profile/Daniel-Schwarz-Carigiet
Microsoft has some of the best computer programmers in the world. Why is Microsoft Windows designed so poorly? Daniel Schwarz Carigiet, Been using Windows since Version 1.0 (shudder). Answered Mon · Upvoted by Kristin Thomas, Support Eng. Manager at Microsoft (1999-present) and Greg Lindsay, Ph.D. Pharmacology, East Tennessee State University = Well, in my experience, in 97.8% of cases along the lines of “why is software ((insert software name here)) so badly designed / so terrible / so user unfriendly?” - such statements usually come from users who haven’t bothered to actually learn to use said software properly. Yeah, yeah… I’ve heard the argument: “But any software that isn’t intuitive is badly designed!!” However, this applies in my opinion only to simple, specific-purpose software with a specific target audience in mind. In such cases, yes - it is usually feasible to design the software to be as easily understandable and as intuitive as possible for that specific target audience. But if someone comes along who is not a part of that specific target audience, then he’ll scream “I don’t understand it, so it’s badly designed. I choose to entirely ignore the fact that I may be lacking in the technical background needed to make the software obvious to me.” Take software designed for architects, or hotels, or travel agencies. If you don’t have the necessary background, then a lot of the stuff you see on screen will make little sense. To you. Now Windows is NOT such a “specific purpose” system. It needs to be accessible to IT specialists (and provide them with access to technical features they need), school kids, teachers, cooks, my grandma, artists, university professors of philosophy, priests, chinchilla-breeders, professional breakdancers… You get the picture. So Microsoft sensibly took a two-layer approach to designing Windows 10 (I’m trying really hard to forget earlier versions): Level 1: Basic functionality set up so that it’s easy to get to and you don’t need to be a tech expert to work with it. Take a look at the redesigned “Settings” menu that went from “oh god, where do I find what I’m looking for?!!” (Windows Vista through to Win7) to a tidy, logical structure (Win10). Level 2: But you can drill deeper if you need to, and you can still access the registry, system processes and so on, but that sort of thing isn’t cluttering up the experience for more basic users. I like the Startup Menu with the customisable tiles that almost no-one bothers to customise because they haven’t bothered to find out what it is for and that they can clear it all up and set up a really neat string menu for all of their regular, daily tasks (with stackable tiles and so on). Very nice. And the search functionality has got far more grown up. But again, every single person who complains hasn’t noticed. Because (I assume) they can’t be bothered. And the ability to snap windows to the four quarters of the screen? I use it all. the. time. What? You didn’t know about it? Well, quod erat demonstrandum, right? I work on a huge 4k screen, and each quarter of my screen has 1920x1080 screen resolution. So I have four monitors in one. Neat. Virtual desktops? Very nice. Yes, I know that OSX had those already. But it’s still nice that we have it now on Win10. And there’s so much more. Not a trace of “poorly designed”. Unless of course you are used to a specific different OS, such as OSX, and have decided to hate anything else, in which case your complaints are a waste of everyone’s time. I use OSX and Windows about 50:50, and I like both. The same as above applies to Microsoft Office, of course. I cannot even begin to count the number of people who moan about Word being “non-intuitive”. I have taught Office for over 30 years, and in every course I have taught where people have gone on and on about how “terrible” Word is, it usually turns out that they haven’t understood Styles. They don’t know what a Section Break is or does, and they basically use Word like a screen-based typewriter. I used to find it amusing, but as I get older, my patience gets shorter. Example: I use Adobe Illustrator and InDesign - a little. I am certainly not even a basic user, as I only use the applications for very specific purposes, and usually the files have been created by design agencies. But it would never occur to me to criticise them for being “badly designed”, simply because I KNOW that I have too little understanding of them as yet. I am aware that the problem is my lack of understanding, not the software being badly designed - because I’m not the target audience. So I shut up. But with Office, I have pretty good knowledge (actually, very pretty good) - and the more I drill in, the more I appreciate the amount of thought Microsoft put into Windows 10 and Office 2016. Yes, of course there are some things which aren’t perfect. Yes, there are areas that need work (creating custom tables in PowerPoint is a pain in the XML / Text boxes containing tables tend to result in corrupt files / Bullet point management is feeble in Word - no resize or recolour…) But overall, each release has been a definite step forwards (let’s ignore Windows 8 and focus of XP → 7 → 8.1 → 10). Same for Office. Each version better and with neater functionality. If you can be bothered to find out about it. = Great comments! :-) -- David B. |
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