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The control panel was solved, so to speak, once they added a search interface. It doesn’t matter how complicated the hierarchy of modules is if what you want is

The control panel was solved, so to speak, once they added a search interface. It doesn’t matter how complicated the hierarchy of modules is if what you want is only a search away. Only Microsoft could unsolve a solved problem by segregating the settings into two paradigms, neither of which is a superset of the other. Even the duplicated functionalities are not equivalent—the list of programs you can uninstall with the new UI is not the same as old UI. No sane person would ever intend to engineer this outcome, but it’s what we get. Very strange how that can happen.

bob1029 5y ago
This is what happens when you have too many chefs in the same design kitchen. Microsoft really could use some product/UX zealot in the driver seat for a while. They should also work on reducing the latency of their products in general... Everything feels like laggy trash now. Someone should do a study on stress levels between windows XP and windows 11 user groups for basic daily office tasks and then throw it into the boardroom.
- vardump 5y ago
  "Microsoft really could use some product/UX zealot in the driver seat for a while." I hate to say this, but I think it would just result yet another UX camp in the system. The weight of legacy is heavy. To clean up the UI mess, Microsoft would need to heavily deprecate supported APIs and conventions, and I don't think that's going to happen.
  - pulse7 5y ago
    Backwards compatibility is pure gold and is worth more than any new trend...
  - usrusr 5y ago
    Yet another camp is the most likely outcome, but it could be avoided by declaring a winner. But that's certainly the approach they always try, yet it never works. Because that declared winner always turns out to be yet another superficial subset full of broken promises. And this declared but failing winner is always the latest incarnation. What they have never tried: going back to the oldest and extending that with new additions. There are always far fewer new additions than the backlog of existing settings that would have to be ported to the latest variation, doing the reverse, properly, wouldn't be that hard.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    They were on the right track, but again the too many cooks part borked the whole execution, now we have lots of tiny kitchens each managed from one of those cooks trying to sell their special dish going forward.
  - numpad0 5y ago
    That'll also legit lead to customers leaving Windows. Just last week I had to assign multiple IP addresses to a same interface, which is totally legit operation, and I firmly believe it will be too much to ask highly skilled UX designers to also be aware of every such minute details as that an interface can have multiple IPs or that PostScript is an Adobe trademark across the whole scope of Windows Control Panel.
  - jen20 5y ago
    It would be particularly ideal if the brand of zealotry employed was “roll the look and feel of everything back to Windows 2000 but add proper scaling support”.
- fps_doug 5y ago
  Hi, Windows Phone fanboy here. I've posted most of the below before. ;-) The sad truth is, that the new Metro UI introduced with Windows 8 specifically for Phones was pretty efficient and slick. A mid-tier WP phone was running circles around a mid-tier Android phone in 2014 when it comes to smoothness. Then we got another reboot of the whole mobile endeavor with UWP for Windows 10, which was more resource intensive, continuing the megalomaniac idea of having a unified mobile and desktop experience. And I don't think it's impossible to create this somehow. I just think developing a nice Phone UI and forcibly bolting it onto a 30 year old desktop OS that mostly evolved in gentle steps before was... stupid. Anyways, the ironic thing today is that that whole UI mess Windows is in was caused by something that doesn't even exist anymore. These two disjoint worlds that lead to these jarring moments where you're thrown from that modern flat-clearly-coming-from-a-mobile-design-paradigm settings window into another dialog coming straight from the 90s. The new one wouldn't exist without Microsoft's botched attempt of re-entering the phone market! Without WP, we could have simply gotten more thought-out iterations and improvements to the plain old Windows GUI, with a desktop-centric approach, but more modern design philosophies. But now we have a mobile-first UI that is being spent lots of effort on to make it usable on a desktop OS. And sure, I'm over-dramatizing a bit here. We got more touchscreens, convertibles, yada-yada that still benefit from these changes. But it was approached in a really twisted, stupid way, and I still don't know anyone who prefers UWP apps. Especially my old folks are rather confused by this and would prefer Windows still looked like XP or 7. Younger people might not care so much but spend all of their time in a browser anyways if they don't use their phones. Everyone else is a professional, and professional software doesn't exist as UWP apps.
jpalomaki 5y ago
For an outsider it is difficult to imagine how big task it is to rebuild the control panel experience. It's not just the things Microsoft has created. There's plenty of 3rd party stuff that integrates to the control panel applets and brings its own UI elements there.
bombcar 5y ago
I’ve come to hate the “search” option - places like Salesforce default to that even in documentation- open Admin, search “Users” - it works but you lose the spacial context and it makes it harder to “discover” related things that may solve your problem more directly.
aasasd 5y ago
> * The control panel was solved, so to speak, once they added a search interface. It doesn’t matter how complicated the hierarchy of modules is if what you want is only a search away.* Uh-huh... unless you don't know what the option is called. Ever tried using translated Windows? I spent hours upon hours wading through those dialogs gawking at the oddities that were supposed to be computer-themed terms in my native language. If you tell me I need to formulate those freaky things in my head, you're gonna get a laugh in your face.

bob1029 5y ago

This is what happens when you have too many chefs in the same design kitchen. Microsoft really could use some product/UX zealot in the driver seat for a while. They should also work on reducing the latency of their products in general... Everything feels like laggy trash now. Someone should do a study on stress levels between windows XP and windows 11 user groups for basic daily office tasks and then throw it into the boardroom.

vardump 5y ago
"Microsoft really could use some product/UX zealot in the driver seat for a while." I hate to say this, but I think it would just result yet another UX camp in the system. The weight of legacy is heavy. To clean up the UI mess, Microsoft would need to heavily deprecate supported APIs and conventions, and I don't think that's going to happen.
- pulse7 5y ago
  Backwards compatibility is pure gold and is worth more than any new trend...
- usrusr 5y ago
  Yet another camp is the most likely outcome, but it could be avoided by declaring a winner. But that's certainly the approach they always try, yet it never works. Because that declared winner always turns out to be yet another superficial subset full of broken promises. And this declared but failing winner is always the latest incarnation. What they have never tried: going back to the oldest and extending that with new additions. There are always far fewer new additions than the backlog of existing settings that would have to be ported to the latest variation, doing the reverse, properly, wouldn't be that hard.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  They were on the right track, but again the too many cooks part borked the whole execution, now we have lots of tiny kitchens each managed from one of those cooks trying to sell their special dish going forward.
- numpad0 5y ago
  That'll also legit lead to customers leaving Windows. Just last week I had to assign multiple IP addresses to a same interface, which is totally legit operation, and I firmly believe it will be too much to ask highly skilled UX designers to also be aware of every such minute details as that an interface can have multiple IPs or that PostScript is an Adobe trademark across the whole scope of Windows Control Panel.
- jen20 5y ago
  It would be particularly ideal if the brand of zealotry employed was “roll the look and feel of everything back to Windows 2000 but add proper scaling support”.
fps_doug 5y ago
Hi, Windows Phone fanboy here. I've posted most of the below before. ;-) The sad truth is, that the new Metro UI introduced with Windows 8 specifically for Phones was pretty efficient and slick. A mid-tier WP phone was running circles around a mid-tier Android phone in 2014 when it comes to smoothness. Then we got another reboot of the whole mobile endeavor with UWP for Windows 10, which was more resource intensive, continuing the megalomaniac idea of having a unified mobile and desktop experience. And I don't think it's impossible to create this somehow. I just think developing a nice Phone UI and forcibly bolting it onto a 30 year old desktop OS that mostly evolved in gentle steps before was... stupid. Anyways, the ironic thing today is that that whole UI mess Windows is in was caused by something that doesn't even exist anymore. These two disjoint worlds that lead to these jarring moments where you're thrown from that modern flat-clearly-coming-from-a-mobile-design-paradigm settings window into another dialog coming straight from the 90s. The new one wouldn't exist without Microsoft's botched attempt of re-entering the phone market! Without WP, we could have simply gotten more thought-out iterations and improvements to the plain old Windows GUI, with a desktop-centric approach, but more modern design philosophies. But now we have a mobile-first UI that is being spent lots of effort on to make it usable on a desktop OS. And sure, I'm over-dramatizing a bit here. We got more touchscreens, convertibles, yada-yada that still benefit from these changes. But it was approached in a really twisted, stupid way, and I still don't know anyone who prefers UWP apps. Especially my old folks are rather confused by this and would prefer Windows still looked like XP or 7. Younger people might not care so much but spend all of their time in a browser anyways if they don't use their phones. Everyone else is a professional, and professional software doesn't exist as UWP apps.

jpalomaki 5y ago

For an outsider it is difficult to imagine how big task it is to rebuild the control panel experience. It's not just the things Microsoft has created. There's plenty of 3rd party stuff that integrates to the control panel applets and brings its own UI elements there.

bombcar 5y ago

I’ve come to hate the “search” option - places like Salesforce default to that even in documentation- open Admin, search “Users” - it works but you lose the spacial context and it makes it harder to “discover” related things that may solve your problem more directly.

aasasd 5y ago

> * The control panel was solved, so to speak, once they added a search interface. It doesn’t matter how complicated the hierarchy of modules is if what you want is only a search away.* Uh-huh... unless you don't know what the option is called. Ever tried using translated Windows? I spent hours upon hours wading through those dialogs gawking at the oddities that were supposed to be computer-themed terms in my native language. If you tell me I need to formulate those freaky things in my head, you're gonna get a laugh in your face.