UI::IU

User Interface - Intuitive Usabilty

I have to give credit to Hugh Macleod again - this print at the end says it all.

In design we often struggle with evolution. Legacy has killed many products, and the software industry often is not nimble enough to recognize when a wholesale revolutionary jump is necessary in order to keep pace with trending and market changes, keeping the brand intact but

changing the product. Few, such as Apple, have been able to truly both be evolutionary and revolutionary, but to no small degree by a clear vision and key perseverance.

Have you ever truly had an experience with a product that, is not only evolutionary in a new market, but could also be revolutionary in another?

This could be the advent of the mobile application market feeding back into the desktop lifestream.

How? Go, boot up your computer. A legacy operating system, built a step up but with an eye towards early adopters, technologists with a bent towards customization and programming, that has not kept up with the widening market of users that only want to click on an icon and run an

application. They don't want to know how it works. They don't want to spend hours trying to devirus the system or flush the cache. They don't want to dig for files.

They just want one window in which a clear set of intuitive interactions await their touch, sans thinking.

I handed my iPhone to my grandfather. This man, as I've come to discover, is the genetic source of my geekiness, a lifetime cabinet builder that bought his first computer at the age of 75. And, with his first touches, he got it.

And so, as a meandering wander through the computer section of Best Buy illustrated, Microsoft hasn't got it. A desktop. Sub folders. All exposed naked, as driven by programmers who supply the masses, historically true to their DOS predecessors.

But why do 95% of users need this? Why, when I go to the office, do I not press a button, and click a few icons into my applications? Why, when I need a new application, do I not click on the store and automatically install it on my computer? Why do I struggle through applications with 10 steps, with the illustrious 'install wizard', the very model of user unfriendliness for non-techs.

If the Chrome OS can spark a change, or Apple can scale their mobile OS to a desktop level, should Microsoft not be afraid? We never know how these elements pan out, but this is a landscape ripe for the taking. Will it be a push to the cloud? Will it be a redesign of a easily customizable, excessively user-friendly desktop experience, in which I have a hood covering the engine to my silicon car?

Let's hope so, if not to bring a level of stability and to finally show a significant step forward in our understanding of human interaction, and understanding of the how we behave.