How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Start Button

I’ve been thinking more about the ramifications of our design decisions lately. I think it’s because we had a less than enjoyable call with a client the other day. Currently we’re working on a system that will be added to the client’s suite of tools which support their business processes. Since we’ve never worked with these clients before everything about the new system and their older systems is new to us. The result is that we keep coming across current and past design decisions that are less than optimal, to say the least. In some cases, they’re down right bizarre. So, like any good developers, our first reaction is always to oil that squeaky wheel.

However, time and time again we keep running into stubborn clients who like their wheels to squeak. Maybe the sound helps them sleep at night, like some other worldly form of white noise. This got me thinking, are people so afraid of change that they’d rather put up with an annoyance or, in this case, a less than optimal process rather than learn another one.

I remember when I first installed Windows 98; a good decade ago now. I was greeted by a helpful little popup dialog that informed me I could click on the Start button to access all my programs and files (On a side note, every time I’ve reinstalled Windows since then I still get greeted by this popup. It’s getting less and less helpful each time). This worked well for the first few years, until J.P. Boodhoo introduced me to Launchy. Now, I never click on the Start button. My desktop is clear of icons; except for anything I am working on at the time. I don’t display the Quick Launch bar anymore; it’s slower than just using Launch.

Even when I change environments and use my Mac, I enjoy the Dock control. Really, I’ve learned that the Start button is probably the least efficient way of accessing anything. Even a larger number of the different Linux distributions put that little button down in the corner so users will get that warm fuzzy windows feeling. Even in Windows 7 we are still presented with the Start button. Sure, when you click it the menu is slightly different, but it’s still the same one stop button shop. I’m even willing to put money on the assumption that the touch screen panels aboard the Starship Enterprise are going to have little tiny Start buttons down in the left hand corners.

When you think about it the Start button, the Dock, Launchy, and the command line; you realize they all do the same thing. They each give you access to your programs and files; each having its own level of overhead. In the computer world, people learn one way to do something and stick with it. Does this really translate into the real world though?

This weekend I need to borrow my parents van. Driving it’s a totally different experience from driving my compact car. All the buttons and knobs and levers are in completely different spot. I don’t think anything other than the wheel and the pedals are in the same location between the two. I’m really not sure if either layout is more efficient, but I do know they’re quite different. None of this stops me from driving it. I don’t even think about it. I just take a second or two to acclimatize myself to where everything is and how to do my normal driving tasks, and away I go.

However, you throw a Windows user into an OS X environment and they are lost. Even though the use cases for both systems are the same, when you introduce technology, people just seem to be unable to remap their processes. I bet if I replaced the steering wheel in your car with a joystick, you’d figure it out pretty quick. But if I replaced your Start button with something a little different, how would you react?

The scary conclusion from all this is that there is a good chance that we are going to be forever shackled to the design decisions of the past; the good and the bad. My keyboard still has a Scroll Lock button, for example, even though I’ve never used it and really have no idea what it does. I just pushed it to see what would happen. It turned on a green LED on my keyboard. Well, there you go, the scroll