Paul Murray's weblog, with news you may have missed and my $0.02 worth on a number of topics.

"You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it."
- Art Buchwald

I bet you don't have a friend who's an acupuncturist

E-mail me: pmurray [at] despammed.com

Listening to users. CNET reports that Microsoft spent months working on a major upgrade to Hotmail that would make it work more like a desktop application, with drag-and-drop editing and message previews. There was just one problem: test users hated it. Not only was it different, it was slow -- particularly for dial-up users.

To their credit -- and it's a shame to have to single out a decision such as this for praise -- the program managers let the users have their way. The fancy desktop-like interface became an option, and another "classic" version originally intended only for older browsers became the new default.

Labels: email, Microsoft, user interface

posted by Paul Murray at 12:59 PM | permanent link |