Windows 8 Metro UI

Windows 8 Metro user interface leaves much to be desired.  But a more viable course given their goals may not have been more desirable.

Microsoft did very well in their less-than-ethical monopolization of the desktop PC, but with such comes responsibility.  To those of us who uses Windows professionally, Windows 8 seems a bit irresponsible.

Now before you read on, please bear one thing in mind: I am referring to the productivity killer from the abrupt death of decades-old UI concepts many professional users of Windows will face with Windows 8.  Sure, the old UI is still there for legacy applications, but not new Windows 8 apps. And the schizophrenic integration of the new and the old in Windows 8 may leave you, well, schizoid.

I can see the potentially huge profit Microsoft will gain from a common interface among their desktop, tablet and phone OS platforms.  But I can also see the UI usability dilemma as a result, which contrary to Microsoft’s hopes may not have been reconcilable.  So a compromise may have been needed instead.  Windows 8 seems to be such a compromise as with any compromise there is a little pain on both sides.  In this light I can understand the $39 upgrade as a viable strategy to reduce some of the pain (would dislike Windows 8 more if the upgrade was say $99).

Regarding productivity, I’d like to explain.  Recently, my team rewrote in C# several applications that were previously written in Delphi.  The main look and feel is hardly distinguishable, but the devil is indeed in the details.  Delphi UI behavior differs subtly on numerous UI features.  Users who repeat keystrokes and mouse clicks hundreds of times per day find these subtle differences a hit on productivity.  At face value it might not seem like a big deal.  But it is, and Windows 8 differences are far from subtle.

You see, and this may come to you as a big surprise, but human beings are biological creatures, and as such, are subject to constraints of our biology.  One of the main constraints of our biology is the idea of energy conservation.  The reason why repetition results in doing things faster and more consistently is due to a concept known as habituation.  What this means is that repeated behavior is stored and executed in parts of the brain known to be very efficient, and this means we can do it without thinking about the movements.

To put this into perspective, consider professional athletes that require equipment to play their game.  You will notice that they have preferences for shape, brand, etc. – due to subtle differences they cannot always explain.  Consider string instrument musicians and their preference for brands.  Change the brand and you change the behavior of the instrument whether sound, feel or spatial design. 

The above examples are probably the most subtle I can think of off the top of my head.  In order to bridge the analogy gap back to Windows 8, I’ll tell you a short story. 

Years ago I was hired to do some work for Deluxe Corporations (they manufacture bank checkbooks).  They were increasingly improving their automation of checkbook manufacturing and packaging.  As you walk through the plant you quickly come to appreciate the checkbooks  flowing automatically on conveyors being routed here and there.  You will easily spot in the middle of it all just before the checkbook box is shrink wrapped, one station that had a real-live person performing one of the tasks: placing inserts into the checkbook box. This worker seemed oddly placed, but the work performed would not be cost effective to replace with automation (robotics).

I marveled at the efficiency of this person.  She (or he) would stand in front of a 5’ by 3’ assembly of what looked like 4” x 4” mail slots.  Each of the slots had a different type of insert, and depending on the checkbook order and status on the customer account, different inserts would need to be placed into the box.  Above each of the slots was a light that would come on for a split second.  In response to a light illuminating, the worker’s hand would reach up to the slot, pull out an insert, and place it in the box.  Both hands were going and moving very quickly.  In fact, I think each box took around one second for this worker to follow the lights and grab an insert and put it in the box.

Let’s say the sizes of these slots were reduced to say 3” x 3”, or the types of inserts were to be shuffled to different slots.  The efficiency of this person would drop substantially, and in fact, I recall hearing about a time when that happened.  The accumulated productivity hit at the end of the day was substantial.  The reason for this is what was habituated was afterwards invalid.  The worker needed to re-habituate new spatial and insert patterns.

Returning to my story of rewriting Delphi applications in C#, you can see that Windows 8 for them might be a hysteresis to productivity.  Given how subtle differences in intra-application UI affects their job, I can imagine the impact from mammoth inter-application UI differences.

Now that we had a broad discussion of UI habituation, you might better understand my pain with Windows 8.

A seasoned software engineer for instance, habituated to an evolved user interface philosophy over decades, will find similar productivity hits in Windows 8. For a software engineer the accumulated effect however is more profound.  Software engineers create, and like anything a human being can do, they habituate not only keystrokes and mouse clicks but also how they create and write code.  Habituating the UI allows creativity to flow in its own form of habituation without interruption from the UI. With a UI well-organized to power users, like the Windows 7 desktop is, and also an additional screen or two, the software engineer can really fly.  The accumulated effect over the course of a project could be significant.

If this was an issue of just another period of habituation, people probably wouldn’t mind so much.  The reality of the Windows 8 Metro interface and the tablet UI in general, is that they are not conducive to this sort of high productivity.  Perhaps the old-style Windows UI could be improved upon but it looks like Windows 8 is not such an improvement.  The only thing Windows 8 offers is potential gain for Microsoft by having a standardized look and feel between their three main platforms.

As a user, I don’t really care what Microsoft’s benefit is – if the net effect for me is a loss.