Thursday, November 15, 2007

So sad

Photo titled dear universe, make vista work for my mommy and stop f'ing around.  xoxo, gemma dear universe, make vista work for my mommy and stop f'ing around. xoxo, gemma by sesame ellis

This photo's title, and the following comment accompanying it, make me sad for the part I played in Vista.

"Yes, I am a photographer still using a PC *shut up* and I have a new speedy laptop with Vista OS. I have a little suggestion for the folks over at Microsoft...Maybe you could make and release stuff that just, I don't know, works?"
On the up side, I know deep down that what I contributed was actually great, no matter the overall product outcome. Not that Vista is truly bad, it's just got some serious issues.

Labels:

Comments

Blogger Nathan Herring said...

If you contribute to a project that you can find no fault with, then you are either hypocritical or the project was tiny. That said, you can still rate businesses on their ability to produce software that is well-designed despite its complexity. Clearly, we (Microsoft employees) have more to learn in this area, and most of it having to do with limiting complexity so our job isn't so arduous.

Blogger Star Girl said...

I'm not sure where hypocrisy comes into play when criticising a product I contributed to, but there's rarely a case when I can find no fault with something whether I contributed to it or not. ;-)

I agree things should be well-designed despite their complexity. Not that this is the cause with Vista (I think it isn't), I find myself thinking lately about whether or not to design for edge cases. I think Microsoft often goes too far to accommodate every edge case and possible setting or way that a user might want to interact with or customize a program. At the other end of the spectrum, some companies (Apple is sometimes guilty of this) optimize for the "80% case" and figure everyone else can go take a leap. Maybe it's worth it if you kick ass for the 80% case instead of doing a lukewarm job for all, but over the years I have come to loathe unhelpful error messages, lazy implementations, and a lack of flexibility in software. There must be a happy medium somewhere--right?

Blogger Nathan Herring said...

Interesting that that is your take-away from Microsoft's perspective. I often find it's the other direction; we limit user-available choices because the increase in complexity causes an increase of testing and support costs we'd rather not bear.

You end up with a problem on either extreme: Thoughtless oversimplification may make your job easier, but people less happy with your product (perhaps even to the point of not using it or using a competitors', if such a thing existed). A cornucopia of choice costs you all the support costs, and at the same time, if not presented well to the users, may only be partially used or understood by them (or worse yet, misunderstood by them and they get a lesser experience than if you had just eliminated the option). Choice doesn't just have the test matrix cost; it has the design cost to make those choices be beneficial in comparison to the time/brainpower users must spend to choose among them.

Blogger Star Girl said...

As is common in life, it's all about finding the right balance.

As an aside, I think our different takeaways about "the way Microsoft does things" is probably different in large part due to the different product areas you and I worked on. While Microsoft may have some tendencies as a whole, things certainly due vary from product line to product line (and from team to team).

Post a Comment

Backlinks (Sites that link here)

Post a backlink

<< Back to blog home