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This may be related to smartphones now being old enough that your average young adult entering the workforce is more familiar with their interface than a Win95

This may be related to smartphones now being old enough that your average young adult entering the workforce is more familiar with their interface than a Win95 style interface. I would bet the average 20 year old can connect a new Bluetooth device on a phone OS faster than they can get to the Sound settings page of Win95. I don’t think UX is static. The UI patterns we recognize change with what we’re exposed to. The Control Panel doesn’t look terribly far off from a terminal app ported to a GUI. It’s also pretty alien to someone accustomed to smartphones. Older adults have used smartphones, but young adults have never used Win95, so a smartphone style interface is more usable for more people. I’m with you, I prefer the Control Panel, but Settings may be more utilitarian.

6510 2y ago
I remember having to point people to the hamburger menu because they couldn't figure out it was a menu. The other week a girl said it would be nice if my website had a menu. Turns out the new generation only understands flat icons. If you make a row of the machine like win 95 buttons they don't see it. "you can click on that? I thought those were just decoration!" The moral of the story is that it is all about conditioning. MS should have left everything the way it was. The money they could have made! I could thoughtlessly click around and do everything on muscle memory. Change things often enough and no one is comfortable. There are no improvements. A new user might like it, they might even like it more than the old user liked their iteration. Say, 5% better for 3% of the users 0.15% improvement in total vs 15% worse for 97% making it 14.55% worse. The difference is 100X No we don't like the new Slashdot.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  > "you can click on that? I thought those were just decoration!" That is hilarious, that is one of my main complaint about modern flat UI is that it's almost never clear that you can click something. Everything looks like decorations or just text.
- keyringlight 2y ago
  In a way that goes back to the skeuomorphism debate around buttons whether they should be drawn flat or 3D effect, where even Office 97 was trying to get rid of buttons looking like buttons and the affordance that they can be pressed, and whether that makes sense on a non-physical thing.
- snozolli 2y ago
  Turns out the new generation only understands flat icons. If you make a row of the machine like win 95 buttons they don't see it. "you can click on that? I thought those were just decoration!" I don't understand how Win 95 icons are meaningfully different than the icons on a smartphone home screen. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you meant.
  - 6510 2y ago
    Not icons, buttons. The gray boxes with highlights, shadows and the description written on them.

6510 2y ago

I remember having to point people to the hamburger menu because they couldn't figure out it was a menu. The other week a girl said it would be nice if my website had a menu. Turns out the new generation only understands flat icons. If you make a row of the machine like win 95 buttons they don't see it. "you can click on that? I thought those were just decoration!" The moral of the story is that it is all about conditioning. MS should have left everything the way it was. The money they could have made! I could thoughtlessly click around and do everything on muscle memory. Change things often enough and no one is comfortable. There are no improvements. A new user might like it, they might even like it more than the old user liked their iteration. Say, 5% better for 3% of the users 0.15% improvement in total vs 15% worse for 97% making it 14.55% worse. The difference is 100X No we don't like the new Slashdot.

mrweasel 2y ago
> "you can click on that? I thought those were just decoration!" That is hilarious, that is one of my main complaint about modern flat UI is that it's almost never clear that you can click something. Everything looks like decorations or just text.
keyringlight 2y ago
In a way that goes back to the skeuomorphism debate around buttons whether they should be drawn flat or 3D effect, where even Office 97 was trying to get rid of buttons looking like buttons and the affordance that they can be pressed, and whether that makes sense on a non-physical thing.
snozolli 2y ago
Turns out the new generation only understands flat icons. If you make a row of the machine like win 95 buttons they don't see it. "you can click on that? I thought those were just decoration!" I don't understand how Win 95 icons are meaningfully different than the icons on a smartphone home screen. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you meant.
- 6510 2y ago
  Not icons, buttons. The gray boxes with highlights, shadows and the description written on them.