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Old February 7th 18, 01:00 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
David B.[_7_]
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Posts: 195
Default 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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