Interrobang's Journal: "And Where Would *We* Like to Go Today?"

Discourse Analytics Notes on Microsoft Design Guidelines

I've been here before.

A coworker e-mailed me a link to "How To Design a Great User Experience," which appears on the MSDN site. (They've helpfully abbreviated it in some places as "How To Design a Great UX." The Great and Powerful UX has Spoken! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.)

This stuff is, in general, really great (if basic) design advice.

If only Microsoft would take it themselves.

You could fisk* this entire article down to the subatomic particles, but I'm really only going to pick on seven of their 17 main points, the ones that offend me the most.

#1. Nail the basics.
Creeping featuritis. Do I really need to say any more?

#3. Don't be all things to all people.
Of course, Microsoft doesn't want you, the application developer, to be all things to all people, because it's too busy solidifying its cartel status in the OS and core application market -- that is, becoming all things to all people itself -- to want anyone to horn into its market share. You could almost say that Microsoft has a corporate philosophy of trying to be all things to all people. (Tie this in to my later point about the word "enable.")

#7. Make it just work.
This is truly a laudable goal, which wouldn't be quite so laughable if anything that came from Microsoft "just worked" outside of a user space roughly the size of a breadbox. "just working" in the Microsoft paradigm is often "Do it our way, and you won't get hurt."

#10. Make it a pleasure to see. This doubtless explains the Windows XP default interface, which only a colourblind person or a four year old with a huge collection of Duplo blocks could love. Actually, personally, I think this is a misstated goal entirely. I don't think an interface should be "a pleasure to see." I don't want to take pleasure in the interface; I want to not notice it 99% of the time. Granted, since a lot of that is habituation, the design goal for a UI should be Make it unobtrusive. (That's an awfully big word for this document, though.)

#11. Keep it simple.
It would be a bad design document if it didn't mention the "KISS Principle" at least once. However, in terms of user interface design, especially in applications (operating systems are an entirely other matter, kaff kaff), I think it's more important to achieve clarity than simplicity. Complex applications generally do not (and should not) have simple interfaces, but there's nothing saying that a complex interface can't be clear. (Terrible precision of language in this document, don't you think?) Perhaps I'll go into more detail about this sometime, as it's threatening to become an entire article on its own.

#15. Don't be annoying.
This one broke my irony meter and exploded the top off my head, all at the same time. Question for Microsoft: If you know this, why don't you practice it?! It took you bloody damn long enough to shoot the paperclip (and I notice there's still an "Office Assistant" on new copies of Word). Your paradigm is notorious for the "Oh! You said 'Do X,' you must mean 'Do Y'!" problem. In the name of making things easier for novice users -- how many completely novice users of Windows do you think there are left in the world?! -- you've implemented things that you've purposely made difficult to turn off and ignore (Automatic Updates, for example) that drive the rest of us nuts. Perhaps you might want to reconsider your design paradigm in terms of relative annoyingness?

#16. Reduce effort, knowledge, and thought.
While I agree with most of the actual concrete suggestions given as bullet points under this tip, the phrasing of the tip itself makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I am always in favour of increasing the user's knowledge and thought, although I advocate gentle learning curves wherever possible. Engaged, thoughtful users help you create better products in the long run, through constructive feedback. Taken as a semantic entity, this tip is just a little too close to the prevailing Microsoft dumb-down for comfort. Don't dumb down, smarten up!

A Further Terminological Note: In the next document in the series, called "Powerful and Simple," the writer explains "our definition of power" (in application terms) thusly:

An application is powerful when it enables its target users to realize their full potential efficiently. Thus, the ultimate measure of power is productivity, not the number of features. Different users need help in achieving their full potential in different ways.

Someone walked right into a connotational minefield here, mostly dealing with pop psychology and certain social situations. As I remarked earlier, I've been here before.

You can pretty much tell they were itching to use the word "empower" there, but it got scrapped in favour of the quasi-synonymic "enable." That particular word, however, conjures up some pretty scary connotations that are rather apropos to Microsoft itself, that of the codependent relationship. Microsoft depends on its user base, and they depend on it (not too many tech writing jobs using Linux or Mac these days), but the relationship is abusive at best. You see, they'll get you all sorts of cool toys (like that application-by-application volume control everyone's raving about in Vista), but smack you around with an ugly-ass UI full of DRM and phone-home features, and then get in your face about it when you complain -- "Whaddaya gonna do, switch? Yeah, go ahead and try it, bitch."

I'm also bristling a bit at the "need help achieving their full potential" phrasing, since the other place (besides Microsoft design manifestos) I hear that phrase a lot is in dealing with programmes and services for disabled people. Usually the kinds of programmes and services for disabled people where the staff ask their adult clients, "And how are we today?" *golf clap* Nicely done. I'd shudder to think what kind of a picture of Joe and Jane Averageuser this Microserf has in his/her head. And if that doesn't tell you practically everything you need to know about Microsoft's attitude towards UI design, as revealed subliminally (or sub rosa) by its discourse, I can't help you.



________
* Dismantle point-by-point, in the style of adversarial journalist Robert Fisk

REminds me ...

[tomhudson]

"Reduce effort, knowledge, and thought. "

Reminds me of my parents telling us "Shut your mouth and eat!" Just doesn't work, unless you're snorting shakes up your nose through a straw.

Make it just work.

[arb]

I think Microsoft really take this one to heart. Remember, "just" is a synonym for "barely", and for some of their software it would be fair to say that it just works.

Re:

[Interrobang]

"Just" can also be a synonym for "fair." On a scale of "excellent" to "poor," where the choices are "excellent," "very good," "good," "fair," "poor," I'd say Microsoft consistently rates "fair." *chuckle* One might point out that this is apparently the only definition of the word "fair" that the entity itself knows.

Same coworker directed me to a PDF version of their entire guidelines, which is almost 700 pages. I think I'll be spending quite a bit of time in the next while taking bits of it apart and

XP

[Abm0raz]

I am colorblind. It doesn't look that bad to me.

Though, I do go into the My Computer->Properties->Advanced->Performance tab->Settings and set it for "Best Performance" so that all of the fancy graphics crap is gone. Then I turn off all the Start Menu special features and set my background to all black with no image.

Minimalistic Windows is the best Windows.

-Ab