Re: A Violent Realisation [Was: Preferences]

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 29Apr2002 08:47PM (-0700), Seth Nickell wrote:
> Here's a riddle for you... Microsoft hires some of the brightest
> programmers, they spend more money on usability research and applied
> testing than any other software company, and apply an enormous amount of
> money to software development. Why does Microsoft software tend to suck
> (unless you count features, it very often has the most features)? Why is
> it generally hard to use, esp. odd since they do so much usability
> testing? Have you ever wondered this?
> 
> I think its because Microsoft product development is dominated by
> engineering. At best people "develop stuff" at the same time as
> usability is done. At worst they change a couple things in response to
> after-the-fact usability testing.

I would put this more generally: it's largely a matter of culture. I
don't think it's necessarily a matter of product development being
engineering-driven. Something many people don't realize is that
Microsoft has a pretty strict dichotomy between the people who design
(including some aspects of interface design as well as the code-level
architecture of various features) and people who implement. The former
are called program managers, the latter are programmers. So most
actual programmers have almost no influence on how things work. This
is considerably different from most other software companies.

One other important thing to notice about Microsoft's products is that
they are really buggy.

I think the broader conclusion to draw is that they place much higher
priority on shipping on certain dates and having certain features than
on ensuring the quality of the experience. Sure they do a lot of
usability testing, but they also do a lot of QA, and clearly not all
of that results in things being actually fixed.

I think the lesson to learn here is that what is valued in a
particular software culture will have a profound effect on the
software itself.

Regards,

Maciej

P.S. Am I agreeing or disagreeing with your thesis? I don't even know.