Designing Windows 95’s user interface

Three years ago I came across an interesting paper written up by a Microsoft employee, Kent Sullivan, on the process and findings of designing the new user interface for Windows 95. The web page has since been taken down – one reason why I’m a bit of a digital hoarder.

It specified some of the common issues experienced from Windows 3.1’s Program Manager shell and looked at the potential of developing a separate shell for ‘beginners’. Admittedly my inclination was that this was possibly inspired by Apple’s At Ease program that was reasonably popular during the System 7 days. I remember At Ease well during my primary school years, so kids couldn’t mess with the hard disk in Finder.

So here’s what Kent had to say verbatim in his paper titled “The Windows 95 User Interface: A Case Study in Usability Engineering” so it’s not lost altogether.

However you feel about Windows 95, there’s no denying that its user interface is probably one of the most iconic and well-known user interfaces ever designed and developed. Literally everyone knows it and has used it, and it singlehandedly defined what a personal computer’s UI should work like. It’s incredibly fascinating to read about the thought processes behind its development.

55 Comments

  1. 2018-02-10 1:14 am
  2. 2018-02-10 6:44 am
    • 2018-02-10 7:40 am
      • 2018-02-12 3:51 pm
    • 2018-02-10 9:58 am
    • 2018-02-10 1:41 pm
    • 2018-02-11 1:58 am
      • 2018-02-11 8:59 am
        • 2018-02-12 5:04 am
          • 2018-02-12 7:16 am
        • 2018-02-13 11:17 pm
          • 2018-02-15 8:31 am
          • 2018-02-15 9:01 pm
          • 2018-02-15 10:03 pm
  3. 2018-02-10 7:56 am
  4. 2018-02-10 12:42 pm
    • 2018-02-10 1:47 pm
      • 2018-02-10 2:40 pm
        • 2018-02-10 3:44 pm
        • 2018-02-10 4:27 pm
          • 2018-02-15 10:21 pm
        • 2018-02-10 11:37 pm
        • 2018-02-11 2:30 pm
      • 2018-02-11 2:41 am
        • 2018-02-11 6:01 am
        • 2018-02-11 8:52 am
          • 2018-02-11 2:51 pm
          • 2018-02-11 3:46 pm
          • 2018-02-11 5:17 pm
          • 2018-02-11 6:42 pm
          • 2018-02-11 11:25 pm
          • 2018-02-12 11:12 am
          • 2018-02-15 10:24 pm
          • 2018-02-15 10:22 pm
        • 2018-02-13 3:10 am
      • 2018-02-11 8:22 am
    • 2018-02-10 5:36 pm
      • 2018-02-11 12:23 am
        • 2018-02-12 10:21 pm
    • 2018-02-11 11:10 pm
  5. 2018-02-11 12:34 pm
    • 2018-02-11 1:54 pm
      • 2018-02-11 3:49 pm
    • 2018-02-11 6:48 pm
      • 2018-02-11 9:23 pm
        • 2018-02-12 7:58 pm
          • 2018-02-12 9:02 pm
  6. 2018-02-12 12:27 am
    • 2018-02-12 6:56 am
  7. 2018-02-12 8:07 am