Post #2597317

2025-11-05 18:31 UTC

The biggest own-goal I've ever experienced in this space was Windows 8. Extremely Late Hot Take: Metro was Actually Pretty Good. But the thing they bungled, hard, was making the Win8 changes _accessible_. If you didn't see the first-run "swipe from off the screen" training montage, all the reflexes you might have from a phone or iPad were all 100% wrong and did nothing. The first time I sat down in front of one of them it took me an hour to figure out how to log in at all.

Replies (4)

@mhoye@mastodon.social 2025-11-05 18:37

And... not to put too fine a point on this, but I have been computering for a very, very long time. I have Seen Some Shit And I have Fixed More Than My Share Of That Shit. I am Quite A Bit Better Than OK at solving the problems that live near computers. And it's been a long, long time since I've sat down in front of any computer of any kind and felt that helpless. Like I didn't even know where to start. Decades. And making people feel helpless is the cardinal sin of UX design.

Open ##2597318
@jernej__s@infosec.exchange 2025-11-05 21:27

@mhoye@mastodon.social IMHO, Windows Phone 7 and 8 had by far the best phone UX. I had a client with WP7, and had to set up mail and a few other things at random times, and it was just so intuitive, at least to me. My mother also had a Lumia 920, and she still misses that phone.

Open ##2597377
@gabrielesvelto@mas.to 2025-11-05 21:37

@mhoye@mastodon.social I click the start menu button to open the start menu I get a full screen of spinning tiles that hides everything else

Open ##2597379
@ddlyh@topspicy.social 2025-11-06 01:00

@mhoye@mastodon.social My Windows PC (not my work one) is Windows 8.1 (I mostly use Linux now) and, despite the easier start button, the startmenu is so hateful I just put things on the desktop or in a folder in the PATH variable to allow me to use the run dialogue box...

Open ##2597383