Every time I use Microsoft products (desktop/mobile/web), I find the user experience below par. And if 20 years ago I wouldn't notice as the expectations were completely different, these days it becomes too clear. Disproportional fonts, controls at weird places, elements to close to each other or too far, etc. The company keeps making some basic UI/UX mistakes while most of the companies in the industry recognized them and fixed many years ago. So, why can't such a big and successful company like Microsoft just hire UI/UX professionals and finally make its products look attractive and convenient to use? #microsoft #ui #ux #design
They have plenty of brilliant designers. It’s just a matter of who has the final say, and listening to the talent you hire.
I don't think I get it. If the company has lots of brilliant designers, why would they do a mediocre job? Are they holding themselves down on purpose? What for? It's them who actually design, not the upper management.
What's not to get? Management tells them what to design and how. 1000 ui developers don't just randomly all churn out the same bad ux design for every msft product
From the king of design himself.
King of design lolol
Same problem with engineering. It's a culture problem with TC. You get what you pay for.
That contradicts to the reality of smaller companies where people are not paid even close to FAANG, yet building great things.
It’s not the designers, it’s the PMs
Garbage (TC) in, garbage (design) out.
Probably you have no idea how design works in big companies, it's not designers. Designers provide pixel perfect design with possible best UX from research and studies, it's PM, engineers who cut these features or can't code it properly. Also there are some higher up ppl that are like a child and they want their product look like whatever they want to be. So designers are last ppl to blame. Just look at some concept designs and finished products.
So, do you think the real reason is sort of micromanagement? I am actually curious specifically about Microsoft, because other big companies apparently happen to manage that part (user experience) better.
It's not only that, that might be true at some level also depends on teams, it's about culture of design, MS wasn't a design oriented company and still is not but it's getting better, ppl are seeing that design is important for success of their product and services. But like other things in life it needs time and we are not still there.
Think about it from a creative standpoint. If you were a top tier creative why the fuck would you go to Microsoft? Enterprise productivity is about as unsexy as it gets. The only reason would be career advancement or TC and we all know how the TC tends to go around here esp for non engineers
I got a feeling that after Ballmer's departure, Microsoft has started to improve. They are trying to get involved with the open source community, compete in the cloud space, web and mobile. Things seem to get better there. I have no idea about the compensation/benefits at MS, but I would still imagine there should be skilled professionals who would go work there.
To their credit, they seem to be taking design more seriously https://www.microsoft.com/design/
Because we don’t pay for good developers.
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Zero. I'm unemployed.
So with that said, what makes you a UI expert?