| The UX of windows 8 is so incredibly poor (even after 8.1) that I question the methodology used to design it. Whatever test group or user studies are suggesting that MS is going in the right direction are deeply flawed. It's just utterly confusing to figure out how to do nearly anything on the OS. There are all sorts of noisy visual cues that look like they communicate state or flow but don't, as well as many seemingly ill-conceived UX "modes" that bewilder me and that just doesn't happen for me with tech stuff. Want to get to the control panel? There appear to be several different ones and you have to hover your mouse in just the right place on the screen in order to coax a bar to slide in and show you a few options. There are several such bars, each triggered by some kind of mouse hover. Since I'm ranting, even the usability on the modern IE site is horrid. It seems that the idea is to have one environment for tablets and for 'normal' users and another for "pro" users who care about advanced control panels. Even if you accept two entirely different UX metaphors coexisting as reasonable, it still boggles the mind how anyone could expect normal users to figure out those strange mouse hovers. It's just such a bewilderingly odd user experience. 8.1 cleans up a few of the biggest warts but is still (IMHO) a UX disaster and I would actively discourage anyone from deciding to use it. Maybe the best business decision for MS would be to just copy OSX as much as possible and then let the legal department deal with any infringement claims. |