5 ms·

The change in taskbar buttons was absolutely massive. Never make the mistake of confusing your ability to learn interfaces with what the general consumer knows.

The change in taskbar buttons was absolutely massive. Never make the mistake of confusing your ability to learn interfaces with what the general consumer knows. The general consumer doesn't find computers intuitive -- full stop. Everything they know is learned; everything.

dpark 15y ago
Getting rid of the labels was, I think, a change of minimal impact. I agree that grouping them was a pretty significant change, though, so that's a good example. I don't think any of the examples so far justify the claim that users have to "re-learn the OS" every version, though. It's a sensationalist claim with pretty much no backing. Most of the changes have been very incremental. Users have moved straight from XP to Win 7 in droves, and few people have complained about having to "re-learn the OS", despite it being a jump of not just one by two major versions.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  I think you are speaking from the position of a person who understands metaphors such as the task bar. Most users do not. Users only understand the most primitive of abstractions; they understand that a button is a button, but what the button does is only learned from experience (good labels help, of course). The change to the grouping-based icons on the taskbar absolutely forced users to relearn. See to you the fact that the buttons are in the same place as the old ones is an indicator that they have similar functionality; the typical user does not make these connections at all. They only know that the old task buttons are gone, and replaced with something they don't know how to use (yet). Now the level of change for this is much smaller than some other changes. Most users figured it out, many on their own (but many did not). I only used this example to demonstrate how things that are obvious and simple to you are massive barriers to common consumers.
  - dpark 15y ago
    There's a large area between "power user" and "computer illiterate". I have no doubt that there were some users who were so confused by the taskbar grouping that they never learned the new behavior, but I cannot believe that this was a common response. (Wouldn't those people actually return their PCs to the store?) Sorry, but just I can't accept that the vast majority of computer users are morons who can't understand it at all when interfaces change and have to start at square one every time. This is too cynical. The taskbar grouping was not that big of a change. Users look for icons in the taskbar, so dropping the labels was pretty minor. The grouping behavior itself was quite discoverable. If you ask an XP user who's just switched to Win7 to open a couple of word documents, and a web browser, and a few more things (enough to trigger grouping), and then ask them to go back to the word document, they'll be able to do it. They'll look in the task bar, click on the icon for Word, and then when the window thumbnails pop up, they's say "what's this?" and then click on one of the thumbnails. Functionality discovered. Yes, there's some initial confusion, but I'd hardly call it a "re-learning" of the entire OS. I also can't believe that Microsoft would have added the grouping if focus groups showed that average users were so lost that it was like using a new OS. There's not enough value added by grouping to ship it if it significantly hurt typical users' experiences.
    - bunderbunder 15y ago
      > I can't accept that the vast majority of computer users are morons who can't understand it at all when interfaces change and have to start at square one every time. You're right, that rather hyperbolic interpretation of what's being described isn't quite true. But it sounds like those kinds of users are quite a bit more common than you realize. And when it comes to driving the PC market, those users are powerful. The reason why most companies in my industry are still standardized on XP is precisely because there are a lot of people like that, and the potential benefits of switching to Windows 7 are minuscule compared to the productivity (read: $$$$) losses that would result from getting these users back up to speed on the new OS.
      - dpark 15y ago
        The hyperbole is not mine. I simply rephrased what MatthewPhilips said. > See to you the fact that the buttons are in the same place as the old ones is an indicator that they have similar functionality; the typical user does not make these connections at all. They only know that the old task buttons are gone, and replaced with something they don't know how to use (yet).
  - Bud 15y ago
    In my opinion (I support Macs, PCs, iOS devices, etc.), it's especially hard to intuitively grasp a metaphor from taskbar buttons if, as is the case in Windows, the taskbar buttons are so tiny and poorly-designed that it's nearly impossible for people with average vision to discern what the icon is supposed to be.
Lewisham 15y ago
But they learned iOS and Android, no? The question at hand seems less about how quickly or readily people can adopt Metro than how often they need to leave it. It seems the context switch is actually the hard bit. Metro Office will go a long way to fixing this.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  iOS and Android wasn't replacing something they were already using to get things done. Users hate change (even when it turns out to be for the better).
  - thornkin 15y ago
    They were replacing things like Symbian, Palm, and Windows Mobile. They required a very different way of thinking than the previous generation of Phone OS's.

dpark 15y ago

Getting rid of the labels was, I think, a change of minimal impact. I agree that grouping them was a pretty significant change, though, so that's a good example. I don't think any of the examples so far justify the claim that users have to "re-learn the OS" every version, though. It's a sensationalist claim with pretty much no backing. Most of the changes have been very incremental. Users have moved straight from XP to Win 7 in droves, and few people have complained about having to "re-learn the OS", despite it being a jump of not just one by two major versions.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
I think you are speaking from the position of a person who understands metaphors such as the task bar. Most users do not. Users only understand the most primitive of abstractions; they understand that a button is a button, but what the button does is only learned from experience (good labels help, of course). The change to the grouping-based icons on the taskbar absolutely forced users to relearn. See to you the fact that the buttons are in the same place as the old ones is an indicator that they have similar functionality; the typical user does not make these connections at all. They only know that the old task buttons are gone, and replaced with something they don't know how to use (yet). Now the level of change for this is much smaller than some other changes. Most users figured it out, many on their own (but many did not). I only used this example to demonstrate how things that are obvious and simple to you are massive barriers to common consumers.
- dpark 15y ago
  There's a large area between "power user" and "computer illiterate". I have no doubt that there were some users who were so confused by the taskbar grouping that they never learned the new behavior, but I cannot believe that this was a common response. (Wouldn't those people actually return their PCs to the store?) Sorry, but just I can't accept that the vast majority of computer users are morons who can't understand it at all when interfaces change and have to start at square one every time. This is too cynical. The taskbar grouping was not that big of a change. Users look for icons in the taskbar, so dropping the labels was pretty minor. The grouping behavior itself was quite discoverable. If you ask an XP user who's just switched to Win7 to open a couple of word documents, and a web browser, and a few more things (enough to trigger grouping), and then ask them to go back to the word document, they'll be able to do it. They'll look in the task bar, click on the icon for Word, and then when the window thumbnails pop up, they's say "what's this?" and then click on one of the thumbnails. Functionality discovered. Yes, there's some initial confusion, but I'd hardly call it a "re-learning" of the entire OS. I also can't believe that Microsoft would have added the grouping if focus groups showed that average users were so lost that it was like using a new OS. There's not enough value added by grouping to ship it if it significantly hurt typical users' experiences.
  - bunderbunder 15y ago
    > I can't accept that the vast majority of computer users are morons who can't understand it at all when interfaces change and have to start at square one every time. You're right, that rather hyperbolic interpretation of what's being described isn't quite true. But it sounds like those kinds of users are quite a bit more common than you realize. And when it comes to driving the PC market, those users are powerful. The reason why most companies in my industry are still standardized on XP is precisely because there are a lot of people like that, and the potential benefits of switching to Windows 7 are minuscule compared to the productivity (read: $$$$) losses that would result from getting these users back up to speed on the new OS.
    - dpark 15y ago
      The hyperbole is not mine. I simply rephrased what MatthewPhilips said. > See to you the fact that the buttons are in the same place as the old ones is an indicator that they have similar functionality; the typical user does not make these connections at all. They only know that the old task buttons are gone, and replaced with something they don't know how to use (yet).
- Bud 15y ago
  In my opinion (I support Macs, PCs, iOS devices, etc.), it's especially hard to intuitively grasp a metaphor from taskbar buttons if, as is the case in Windows, the taskbar buttons are so tiny and poorly-designed that it's nearly impossible for people with average vision to discern what the icon is supposed to be.

Lewisham 15y ago

But they learned iOS and Android, no? The question at hand seems less about how quickly or readily people can adopt Metro than how often they need to leave it. It seems the context switch is actually the hard bit. Metro Office will go a long way to fixing this.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
iOS and Android wasn't replacing something they were already using to get things done. Users hate change (even when it turns out to be for the better).
- thornkin 15y ago
  They were replacing things like Symbian, Palm, and Windows Mobile. They required a very different way of thinking than the previous generation of Phone OS's.