Windows 95 User Interface: Usability Engineering

thinkpadman

http://www.sigchi.org/chi96/proceedings/desbrief/Sullivan/kds_txt.htm

I came across this article which I thought was interesting written by Kent Sullivan who worked/works at Microsoft around the initial design and development of the Windows 95 GUI.

Visual Basic was used for creating design mockups, including investigating the feasibility of a 'beginner' UI. It also goes into detail from a testing point of view with a number of users at different levels of what worked and didn't work well.

SomeGuy

Needless to say they didn't do any of this for Windows 8. :P

Ah, the good old day when user testing was actually done with users, instead of meaningless automated metrics.

thinkpadman

Funny that you should mention that, I was thinking the same thing when I read:

We were aware that creating a product which was radically different from Windows 3.1 could confuse and disappoint millions of existing users, which would clearly be unacceptable.

The Windows 8 Metro interface certainly did that! If Microsoft had also gone ahead with their 'beginner' UI, I wouldn't be at all surprised Apple would take legal action for resembling to closely with their At Ease program at the time.