Microsoft: Infinite Wisdom
I wanted to turn off the built-in firewall in Windows XP (my test machine - I work on Macs) so I went to the Control Panel and clicked on Security Center. So far so good. When Security Center opens up you are greeted with a window, inside which has three main sections, each with a coloured header. The first 2 are green, which instantly says “Go”, or “On” to me. Very good. Still so far so good. On the right hand side of these green coloured header bars is a radio button looking device, like a glowing light, and they are both glowing green. Still good. So, I figured, clicking on one of these radio button lights, like a switch, a light switch let’s say, would toggle between “On” and “Off”. O.K. We have now reached the “Houston, we have bad usability” portion of this discussion.
There is one other design element in the right hand side of those headers; upward facing double arrows. These are used to show or hide the details under them. The details are shown by default. I have no problem with this, pretty much standard fare. The problem is the “light switch radio button” performs the same function as the arrows. Bad. Bad Microsoft. I could not figure out, for the life of me, how to turn off these options. Like I said, 3 sections show up each with a coloured header bar.
Frustrated I started looking elsewhere within this window, at first to no avail. Then I scrolled down. That revealed to me 3 links, one of which deals with something new (the first link listed there) and the other two are the same as the first two coloured header bars, but now in reverse order! Oh Microsoft…
In order to toggle (yeah right, toggle) between “On” and “Off” you must click on the link at the bottom of this window (which again is hidden from first view). Another(!) window opens to reveal your options. NOW you can “flip the switch”. Kind of like walking down the hall from your bedroom into another room to turn on or off the light in your bedroom.
Being a long-time Apple user I guess I have come to expect brilliant usability in everything, be it computers, cars, books, audio equipment, whatever. Is Apple perfect? No. I find some things they do confusing, but what they do right, and this is a huge percentile, like 99%, they do exceedingly well which makes me less frustrated when things are oddly configured.
But hey, these are just my thoughts. Maybe someone out there can explain why Microsoft did this the way they did so it makes sense. I doubt it, but maybe. Let us know your thoughts on this usability concern or any other related… or not related. That’s fine too.
3 Comments
Having recently had to install Windows XP and then configure IIS, I’m confident that MS really doesn’t put usability at the top of any of its lists.
Look at any tutorial for setting something in windows and you will see a list like:
click on item > item > item > item > tab > option > tab > apply.
It’s nuts.
Now, just how am I, as a highly-paid Windows network administrator, supposed to make any money if everything were easy or intuitive? As long as Microsoft keeps things confusing and counter-intuitive, I’ll have a job.
Oh, and thanks for telling people the trick to turning off the firewall - I can just see all the users that are going to get their machines hacked and need hours and hours of support!
I have to agree with Dave- Microsoft probably has put thought quite a bit of thought into usability; although the desired result is not necessarily the most user-friendly design. Un-usability = Job Security for many I.T. professionals. Think about it - if everyone owned a Mac, the technical support teams in the IT industry would shrink dramatically… Although the increased productivity of Mac users just might off-set that balance
Anyway, if you thought changing firewall settings was hard, try to “toggle” Anti-virus protection. In fact, show me an option in the control panel where it’s even an option, and lunch is on me! ;-D (It’s kind of like walking down the hall from your bedroom to turn on or off the lights for your bedroom - only to realize that the lightswitch is just for looks, and you should actually be “toggling” the circuit breaker in the basement!)