Looks Are Deceptive
When I bought my last car, I thought it looked slick, fresh, cool. But
then, a couple months later, a friend of mine bought a new car that
looked even slicker, fresher, cooler. I could never look at mine
with the same eyes again. It didn’t have the same freshness
anymore. I have to get a new one, now!
What does this have to do with software? Well, software’s got to look
fresh, too. You may think that you buy software on pure
rational merits, but often, the facts are against you.
Microsoft, of course, has known this for ages. They are constantly
moving the fashion in user interface design (not interaction
design, mind you) forward, with every new product release. And
everybody else has played catch-up. Excluding Apple.
Long ago, the Windows 3.1 interface was mostly black-on-white. Then
Microsoft added 3D borders on dialog boxes and buttons. Then came a
completely new look in Windows 95, including a small video clip when
you copy a file. Then came the Office 97 tool bars with buttons that
have no border until you move your mouse over them. Then, in Office
2000, came the little icons in the menus, not to mention “Clippy”, the
animated paper clip. And now, with Office XP, the look of the menus
has changed yet again.
Arguably, a lot of these changes are at least attempts at
productivity enhancements. But the productivity enhancement part of it
could easily have been achieved without an aesthetic
redesign. Microsoft, having a clue, redesigned.
Why? Well, I don’t know about you, but the first thing I do when I get
my hands on a new piece of software is to play with the user
interface. Click on things. Pull down the menus. Right-click
everywhere. Just to get a sense of what it does. Learn what’s
new. Read the “What’s new” section in the help, you say? Never! I just
want to have fun. And since at that moment, I usually don’t have a
real task at hand, say, a letter or a program to write, or a diagram
to draw, I play with the UI, just for the fun of it. Silly? Yes, I’ll
admit to that. But it gives me instant gratification. And as FedEx and
UPS well know, instant gratification is worth real money.
What Happens When You Don’t
One example of a company that did not follow Microsoft’s lead, is
Borland. At the time, I used Delphi most of my programming work, and I
upgraded diligently. And for a long time, each new version that
came out would look exactly like the old one. All the new features
would be hidden under the surface. Exception handling? Cool, but you
can’t see it or play with it. Faster compilation? Excellent, but what
does it matter if the first program I write with my new toy is Hello,
World? DCOM support? Sure, but that takes hours to get anything
useful out of. No instant gratification. I just paid over a thousand
dollars for a brand new version of Delphi, and I’ll be damned if it
doesn’t look exactly like the one I already had. Wait! Maybe
I’m still running the old version? Nope. What a waste!
Of course, later, I’d realize that there was actually good bang for
the buck in that upgrade. But Borland lost their opportunity to
up-front give me that warm and fuzzy feeling. Microsoft would
never blow that chance. They know that first impressions last.
Borland’s software may be technically superior, but it
looks like it’s last year’s model. And every review there is
will always include screen shots. If you can’t see immediately from
the screen shots that there’s something new and cool, why buy it?
Well, yes, of couse, for boring, rational reasons, but that’s just not
as much fun. And after all, if the vendor couldn’t even afford to
give it a new look, is there any reaosn to believe they spent the
effort to make it better under the hood? We all know that, despite
meticulous cost-benefit analysis, the tech CEO usually ends up buying
the software that looks coolest. Or the industrial robot. Or the
car. Or the beard trimmer. Or whatever.
Hence, Microsoft always do something fresh with the menus and the
toolbars, which happens to be the first thing you see when you start
the program. Microsoft, of course, is uniquely positioned to
introduce fashion just there. Windows already includes basic
menus, toolbars, and buttons. But the latest, trendy menu design isn’t
released to the general public. If you want to follow suit, you have
to implement it yourself, and you’ll find yourself playing
catch-up. And since Microsoft dominates your desktop, anyway,
eventually everybody will follow suit. And by then, Microsoft will be
on their way to something new.
Interesting Side Notes
The splash screens that pass by as you install the software is yet
another testament to the value of instant gratification: Gotta let
the guy know he bought the coolest software on the planet, while
he’s waiting impatiently to get it installed. God, computer users are
impatient and ungrateful beasts!
An interesting example of a company that has been successful in
not following Microsoft’s visual appearance lead, is Adobe,
most notably their Photoshop product. Photoshop has its own unique
look and feel, partly because of their Mac background, partly just
because Adobe is stubborn, and rightly so. But Photoshop arguably has
a different audience than most other software: Hard-core graphic
professionals that use it every day. Photoshop already has a
considerable learning curve, but the learning curve is equally
rewarded in productivity-enhancing short-cuts. The point is that
Photoshop’s audience will be inclined to look much deeper before being
disappointed. But Adobe still knows better than to not provide
something visibly new with every release.
Another, related thing, that Microsoft does well, is always include
some obscure feature, that is clearly useless, but fun to show to
your friends. Word’s “Text Effects” (a tab in the Font format
dialog) is an example of this. When has anyone ever had the need to
surround a text by marching red ants? Yet it’s there, and it’s fun to
say “Did you know that Word could do this?”. Likeways with
Auto-summary. It’s utterly useless in practice, but when you take your
friend’s doctoral thesis and ask for a 5-line summary, amusing
nonsense ensue. Or the dockable toolbars. Lots of fun to play around
with, but not a single person that I know actually ended up having
them any other place than right below the menu. And I won’t even
mention “Clippy”. The point is that you tend to show it to your
friends, and that they tend to want to have that, too, so they can
show it to their friends. So the next Monday, they go beg their boss
to buy the latest version of Microsoft’s software. And eventually, he
will.
Is It Worth It?
So is it worth it to invest in a new, snazzy look for the latest
version? Microsoft obviously seems to believe that it is. Not to
mention the car industry. And, of course, the fashion industry.
And, not surprisingly, I believe so, too. Especially if you’re
operating in web software and not desktop software, it doesn’t really
cost that much to hire a graphic designer and tell him: Redesign
this, so it looks like next year’s model. You might as well. Where
you’re going to find the money? How about using the money that you
gained by doing your interaction design.
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