It’s almost a year since Windows 11 was launched. Although it received a lot of good reviews at the beginning, especially with Intel’s 12th-generation processors, according to the latest foreign statistics, Windows 11’s market share is still not as good as Windows 10’s. Not even half of it, which is a far cry from every new Mac OS launch. Not only that, but a former Microsoft engineer recently came out to complain about the start menu design of Windows 11, which was disappointing from the experience to the details.
Ex-Microsoft engineer spit on Windows 11’s Start menu design, disappointing
Recently, the co-founder of Textio, Jensen Harris, who previously worked as a Microsoft Office designer at Microsoft, posted many disappointing remarks about the design of Windows 11 on his personal Twitter. One of the most obvious is that when you start the search function of the menu in Windows 11 , when searching for Chrome or Firefox, a “Promotion of Microsoft Edge advertising message” will pop up on the right, asking if you want to switch to the browser recommended by Microsoft:
And this design seems to be only for Chrome or Firefox, and when you search for Opera, Brave, Vivaldi and other browsers, the same ad message will not pop up.
Jensen Harris said that the start menu is Microsoft’s most important user experience, and the UI should be designed to the best, which is really shocking.
Then he mentioned, what about the Bing Wallpaper Web 1.0 Geocities-era banner above the ad? To be honest I felt as if I was poisoned. Not only is the text misaligned, but it also uses a Windows Vista-like background that looks really weird:
Let’s start at the top. What is going on with the Web 1.0 Geocities-era banner ad for a “Bing Wallpaper app”?
Honestly, it looks like I was infected by a virus.
The text is misaligned and it’s sitting on top of a Windows Vista-era background.
But it gets weirder. pic.twitter.com/XHQHfoBpRX
— Jensen Harris (@jensenharris) August 29, 2022
Not only that, he also zoomed in on the banner to take a closer look at the four corners (it really is the designer), and pointed out that the upper left corner and the upper right corner have the same edge design, the left side is round, the right side is pointed, and both should be round. right. Also the black line at the bottom left is weird:
According to Jensen Harris, the big question here is why are there banner ads in the start menu? In order to make money and exposure for this wallpaper app, is it worth reducing the UI experience? A great UI is supposed to help users get things done with minimal effort, and the Start menu is the largest UI in Windows 11, but I feel like it’s been distracting.
“Design matters, and details make or break, especially in a UI as iconic as the Windows Start Menu. I remember the team created a special ligature in the Segoe UI font (used in Windows) to have the “S” and “t” line up perfectly in the “Start” of the word. That’s how important Start is to Microsoft”
Jensen Harris tweeted a lot of critiques of the Start menu, and those who are interested can click below to see them all:
The Start menu is Microsoft’s flagship user experience. It should represent the very best UI design the company is capable of.
Today I searched for “chrome” in Windows and was shocked by the user experience. pic.twitter.com/GZq386qqzK
— Jensen Harris (@jensenharris) August 29, 2022