We seem to have entered an age of computing that I didn’t see coming: the age of the terrible user interface. Windows 8 is leading the charge with not one, but two awful interfaces. That’s what I think, and so does the lord of all interface analysts, Jakob Nielsen. He said Windows 8 is “weak on tablets, terrible for PCs.”
But it’s not just Microsoft. GNOME, once the leading Linux desktop, is rapidly fading into the background because of bad design choices in GNOME 3.x. What’s going on?
I think the problem is that far too many people have forgotten UI 101 — make it easy — despite the availability of the handy acronym KISS (keep it simple, stupid).
Since back when Microsoft was still calling its brand-new interface Metro, I saw Windows 8 as a disaster in the making.