Windows 8 first impressions

An acquaintance of mine got a Windows 8 machine for Christmas, and so I got a chance to take a brief look at it. Here are some first impressions.

Windows 8 uses a tile-based UI that was called "Metro" during development. As a brief overview, the home page on Windows 8 is no longer a desktop, but instead features a number of tiles, one for each of the machine's most featured applications. Double-clicking on a tile causes it to maximize and take the whole display. There is no visible toolbar, no visible taskbar, no overlapping of windows. In general, the overall approach looks very reasonable to me.

The execution is another story. Let me hit a few highlights.

First, the old non-tiled desktop interface is still present, and Windows drops you into it from time to time. You really can't avoid it, because even the file browser uses the old mode. I suppose Microsoft shipped this way due to concerns about legacy software, but it's really bad for users. They have to learn not only the new tiles-based user interface but also the old desktop one. Thus it's a doubly steep learning curve compared to other operating systems, and it's a jarring user experience as the user goes from one UI to the other.

An additional problem is a complete lack of guide posts. When you switch to an app, you really switch to the app. The tiles-based home page goes away, and the new app fills the entire screen, every single pixel. There is no title bar, no application bar, nothing. You don't know what the current app is except by studying it's current screen and trying to recognize it. You have no way at all to know which tile on the home page got you here; you just have to remember. The UI really needs some sort of guide posts to tell you where you are.

The install process is bad. When you start it, it encourages you to create a Microsoft account and log in using that. It's a long process, including an unnecessary CAPTCHA; this process is on the critical path and should be made short and simple. Worse, though, I saw it outright crash at the end. After a hard reboot, it went back into the "create a new account" sequence, but after entering all the information from before, it hits a dead end and says the account is already being used on this computer. This error state is bad in numerous ways. It shouldn't have evened jumped into the create-account sequence with an account already present. Worse, the error message indicates that the software knows exactly what the user is trying to do. Why provide an error message rather than simply logging them in?

Aside from those three biggies, there are also a myriad of small UI details that seem pointlessly bad:

• The UI uses a lot of pullouts, but those pullouts are completely invisible unless you know the magic gesture and the magic place on the screen to do it. Why not include a little grab handle off on the edge? It uses a little screen space, and it adds some clutter, but for the main pullouts the user really needs to know they are there.
• In the web browser, they have moved the navigation bar to the bottom of the screen. This breaks all expectations of anyone that has used another computer or smart phone ever in their life. In exchange for those broken expectations, I can see no benefit; it's the same amount of screen space either way.
• The "support" tile is right on the home page, which is a nice touch for new users. However, when you click it the first time, it dumps you into the machine registration wizard. Thus, it interrupts your already interrupted work flow with another interruption. It reminds me of an old Microsoft help program that, the first time you ran it, asked you about the settings you wanted to use for the search index.

On the whole, I know I am not saying anything new, but it strikes me that Microsoft would benefit from more time spent on their user interfaces. The problems I'm describing don't require any deep expertise in UIs. All you have to do is try the system out and then fix the more horrific traps that you find. I'm guessing the main issue here is in internal budgeting. There is a temptation to treat "code complete" as the target and to apportion your effort toward getting there. Code complete should not be the final state, though; if you think of it that way, you'll inevitably ship UIs that technically work but are full of land mines.

Okay, I've tried to give a reasonable overview of first impressions. Forgive me if I close with something a little more fun: Windows 8 while drunk.