Initial Feedback on Windows 8 Highlights Major User Experience Issues

The user experience results for Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 8 are starting to flow in – and they aren’t very positive.

A blogger named Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has described it as “a design disaster”. While he praised the new Metro UI on Windows 8 for its initial good looks, he said it falls down miserably in terms of actual usability. Apparently, Metro is exhausting since it requires users to scroll too much.

In addition, not only has Metro been made the primary user interface in Windows 8, Microsoft developers have seen fit to destroy the ‘classic’ UI experience too by giving most of the applications a ribbon toolbar that is reportedly very fiddly to use with a mouse and even worse when driven with a finger on a tablet device.

While Windows 8 does get the thumbs up from a performance perspective, the initial feedback has many people wondering whether Microsoft is set for another Vista disaster. At present, tech gurus are disappointed and recommend that people stick with Windows 7.

• Tagged in:
• Design
• UI (User Interface)
• Usability
• Windows 8