At the recent Vision 2025 event, Intel’s newly appointed CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, emphasized the company’s commitment to prioritizing customer feedback and enhancing performance in its future initiatives. This signals a strategic shift aimed at better aligning product offerings with user expectations.
It’d be interesting if Microsoft had this ideology also – make software what the users want. Currently it’s “make MS software a platform to sell other MS software”, like “Windows is no longer an OS, it’s an advertisement platform for Office 365 and Copilot”.
Interestingly, a recent comment from a Microsoft employee, Harold Gomez, revealed that user feedback played a minimal role during the design phase of Windows 8. As a UI designer at the time, Gomez reflected on the company’s design philosophy and the challenges of integrating user perspectives.
During a nostalgic event celebrating Microsoft’s 50th anniversary, where Bill Gates reminisced about the company’s history, Gomez highlighted the balance between instinctual design choices and user feedback. He stated:
Part of the design process is trying to balance user feedback with your design instincts. We certainly could not have gotten to what Windows 8 was with the Metro visual style, solely relying on customer feedback. It was something customers would never have asked for because we lived in a very iPhone world at that time.
Windows design took a pivot and tried to create something different while rooted in our design ethos and principles. We experimented with information design, typography, layouts, and making motion design an integral part of our systems. We did the work around understanding what our customers’ needs were and coupled those insights with our design instincts, which helped us create something special.
Despite these innovative efforts, Windows 8 faced considerable criticism upon its release. Users expressed frustration over the removal of the intuitive Start button, leading to Microsoft swiftly reintroducing it in Windows 8.1. This backlash exemplifies the risks of neglecting user feedback in the design process.
As Microsoft reflects on its design journey, one question remains: Has the company truly learned from its experiences? We invite you to share your thoughts in the comments below!
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