Good Design *Still* Evades Microsoft
By David Golding
| 
Print This Post
French analyst and researcher Andreas Pfeiffer recently reported that Microsoft’s new Vista OS is a step backward from XP. While Microsoft has worked hard to give a new look to its OS, it clearly went the wrong direction from a design standpoint. This brings me back to what Adam Smith preached back in the 1700s: specialization is the most effective way to go. Here’s what I mean.
Microsoft has employed gazillions of tech gurus from around the world to build software. Now, it’s debatable how well they do that, but everything still comes down to the design. Design is the bottleneck. If a user is lost in the program, it does not matter at all what the program can do; the user can’t access the power or the features. Time and again software companies hire out the guys that can build features but get little design help to make those features accessible. Microsoft, the world’s biggest software manufacturer, is at a loss of design expertise.
Take their rival, Apple. Apple employs as many industrial and graphic designers as they do programmers. And the result is that people know how to use the product right out of the box. There is always the learning curve, but no one can doubt the fluidity of using an Apple product as compared to a Microsoft product.
The principle? When building applications, web applications or any other, we need to spend as much time, if not more, in fleshing out the design. And the more Microsoft neglects to do this, the more frustrated users will become and the greater advantage they hand over to Apple and other competitors.
Comments
Submit Comment
