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Windows 95 User Interface: TechNet Interviews Joe Belfiore

As the excitement and enthusiasm about Windows 95 builds among all types of computer users, many questions are beginning to arise: Why were the decisions made to change Windows so dramatically? How will we train end users on the new interface? To help you answer these questions, TechNet went to the source and interviewed Joe Belfiore. Joe Belfiore is the Lead Program Manager on the Windows 95 user interface team responsible for the overall design of the user interface of Windows 95, including the shell and applets.

We talked about the goals of the design, how those goals were addressed for various types of users, some things to address in training that will make the transition easier, and the philosophy behind some specific UI elements. In the companion Try This: Joe Belfiore's Top Windows 95 User Tips, Joe shares some of his favorite Windows 95 user interface tricks.

The Design

TechNet: What were your goals behind the design of the user interface?

Joe: There were four main goals for the UI:

Learnability. It has to be really easy to learn and that targets two different groups of people: existing Windows. 3.1 users and new users. One of the biggest problems of Windows 3.1 is that it's just too hard to learn. Someone who has not used computers before will have an awful hard time getting up to speed with Windows 3.1. We also wanted to make sure that it was really easy for Windows. 3.1 users with varying levels of expertise to get into a new user interface and really quickly become even more productive, and take advantage of the features in Windows 95.

Usability. What usability means is that, you can be efficient and comfortable in the environment over a longer period of time. For instance, if after a couple months of using the system , it occurs to you to do a certain task, the environment in which you know how to do it already exists. You try, and it works, and you're able to perform a whole breadth of activities. Usability also means that the things that you do very frequently can be done efficiently and relatively fast:, it is a smooth environment.

A Safe Environment. Many people today using all kinds of different platforms don't have a very positive, constructive relationship with their computer. It's out to get them; it's going to eat their data; things are going to disappear. We want Windows 95 to be the kind of environment where you feel safe and comfortable. And there are a whole slew of features that relate to that. An obvious example would be the Recycle Bin. A less obvious one would be the fact that the Taskbar is always visible as a safe place you can always go back to.

Irrational Emotional Attachment. We want people to really like Windows 95. We want them to feel good about using it. We want it to be fun and positive so that people will not be intimidated by their environment and will try to get more out of their PC. We've tried to make the environment fun and visually pleasing.

TechNet: In a lot of the literature, you hear about the beginning, intermediate, and advanced user. How do you define who falls into those categories?

Joe: I'm not sure there really is an industry standard. The definition we have used for a beginning user is a "GUI novice" (Graphical User Interface). That is, someone who really doesn't know how to use the graphic interface. This includes people who either have not used computers before or have only used MS-DOS. There are a lot of people who have used MS-DOS but their extent of experience with an operating system is choosing "1" for WordPerfect and "2" for Lotus 1-2-3 and that is all they know how to do. They don't know how to copy files, they don't know about the notion of directories, they don't know how to get to things on the network; none of that. The other things that make you a GUI novice are you don't know how to deal with windows. You don't know that clicking on a window will bring it to the front or that you can drag it by the Title bar.

Now what characterizes intermediate users, which is by far the largest group of Windows 3.1 users today (actually a lot of them are still beginners as well), is that they know how to use the Program Manager. They can obviously launch their application. Maybe they use the File Manager. We found that a surprisingly large number of people don't use the File Manager at all. In fact they don't do file management at all. So intermediate users typically know a little bit about launching applications, and may or may not occasionally go into File Manager.

Advanced users are the kinds of people who use keyboard shortcuts like ALT+TAB. (Some intermediates know Alt+Tab, but not that many.) Advanced users are the ones who can tell you which shortcut keys invoke which actions in File Manager. Advanced users know how to type MS-DOS commands. One thing we found is that a very large number of Windows 3.1 users have no idea how MS-DOS works. They couldn't come up with a simple DOS string; it would never occur to them. It is way beyond their knowledge of the computer and operating system. Advanced users could formulate that string.

TechNet: How do you categorize OS/2 or Macintosh users?

Joe: People who have used OS/2 or Macintosh for a little while are no longer "GUI novices," but are probably at least intermediates. Chances are that someone who has been using OS/2 for a while may be a little more advanced because OS/2 has a very steep learning curve.

TechNet: So how are the "GUI novices" taken into consideration in the design?

Joe: "GUI novices" are an interesting group. We did a whole lot of things to find out how we could make the operating system platform really easy for novices to learn. Watching them in usability testing was really a painful experience for us, because in the beginning we weren't that good at solving the problems. Many times a group of us would be sitting behind the usability glass kind of beating our heads against the walls, saying "Click on that icon!" So we did more usability testing. We went out and interviewed educators, people who teach classes on how to use the Mac and how to use Windows, and asked them, "What is hard for people to learn?" They were super helpful. In fact, we kind of adopted them. We brought them in and showed them prototypes of our stuff. And then we brought them back in again and showed them the final version.

We identified what I would say are the top three learning obstacles of every graphical interface available today. Every Windows application and every windowing platform today is guilty of making people learn how to deal with these three things before they're ready.

The first is window management. There are a whole lot of rules about how you deal with windows and it's just not intuitive. It's not something that you walk up to a computer and already know how to do. You have to know that these particular rectangles on the screen are floating in a 3D space and that one might be on top of another, and one might be completely obscured and you couldn't see it at all, yet it's still there. You have to know that clicking on one will move it to the front; you have to know you can change their sizes by dragging on corners, by dragging on that color thing or striped thing at the top (the Title bar). You have to know there are buttons that will make them disappear and go way down here as an icon or get really big. All these rules. That is a big learning obstacle for people.

The second obstacle is dealing with hierarchies. If you give people a long list of things and ask them to find something in it, they'll find it. If you give them a long list of containers and say "in one of these containers is the thing you want," they'll find it. If you give them a tree, they don't really know how to search it anymore. They can't tell where they've been and where they haven't looked and that makes things a lot harder for people to deal with.

And the third learning obstacle is double-clicking. Double-clicking is a terrific shortcut for the more experienced. You've got 60 million window users out there who double-click tens or hundreds of times a day, but if you're someone who hasn't done it before it won't occur to you and it'll be hard for you to do physically.

Those are the learning obstacles that novices have. What we've done with Windows 95 is solve those problems without alienating Windows 3.1 users. It's not hard to just design something that is easy for novices. What is hard to do is design something that is easy for novices but keeps everyone with you. What we did was design the user interface so that there is a progressive disclosure of tasks and features (that a novice would want) that they can get to without bumping into the learning obstacles. The key here is the Start menu and Taskbar. You can single click the Start button and you get a simple short list of the tasks you probably want to do. The Taskbar itself sort of saves you from having to know all the rules about window management. All you have to do is click on a button to go back to any window. These are really the key to making Windows 95 a great platform for people who are just learning how to use a PC or a windows environment.

TechNet: How does Windows 95 make it easier to use for the intermediate Windows user?

Joe: Well, intermediate Windows. 3.1 users have a few problems today. There is too much middle management in Windows 3.1 All those intermediate people know how to use the Program Manager. That knowledge doesn't help them manage files. It doesn't help them deal with printers. So if they have a problem with a printer, it's a support call because they don't know how to transfer their knowledge from one place to another. What we did in Windows 95 to solve that problem was to design a single user interface where you always deal with objects through folders or the Explorer. Once you do that you know how to deal with printers and with file management and with getting to things on the network. So a little bit of knowledge really goes a long way. What we find is intermediate Windows 3.1 users who didn't do file management before, who wouldn't even try to get their printers working, now can do all that stuff in Windows 95. It's not really a new feature, but we made it accessible to them by making the design easy enough to use and consistent enough that they would already know how to do it. Really the key is consistency across lots of different things, so that you can use your knowledge for many different tasks.

TechNet: You can either optimize for performance of this great new operating system or make it extremely easy for existing "intermediate" Windows 3.1 users. How did that balance work out?

Joe: Our top priority is that the transition above all has to be smooth for Windows 3.1 users. In fact if you look at the statistics from all usability testing, we have focused more than half of our usability testing on intermediate Windows 3.1 users. Fortunately, making an operating system easy to learn is kind of a one-shot deal. If you're making it easy to learn, then it's easy to learn for everyone. While it's been tricky to balance this, I think that is what is great about the design, that if you're a Windows 3.1 user and you move to Windows 95, it'll take you 1/2 hour to be pretty comfortable in the environment. If you're a new user, then you'll get up to speed really quickly.

TechNet: What was the most important consideration for Windows 3.1 users? Making it easy to find the capabilities you're used to?

Joe: The key thing we had to do was preserve all the lower level interactions that Windows 3.1 users know how to do and make them very natural. What that means is you still select things and choose commands from the menu bar. You can still double click on icons, you can still drag and drop things, you can still Cut, Copy and Paste. You can still move windows by dragging the Title bar. There is still a minimize command. You can still double-click the upper left corner of a window and close it. All the things that Windows 3.1 users are used to are largely still there. So the basic parameters for the operating system really haven't changed at all.

The question is how you organize the tasks that people want to do so that the tasks are easy to find: starting in Program Manager, getting to documents, finding things you've lost, maybe re-ordering or reorganizing your hard disk. So how do you use the paradigm that people already know to make those tasks really easy? It's really more of an organization of tasks than it is changing the basic paradigm that people know how to perform in an operating system. We haven't changed any of the basic activities that a Windows 3.1 user has learned. The picture on the button may be different, but the button does the same thing. Actually that's a very important thing to remember. It's really not that different.

TechNet: The remaining group is advanced users. Are there still features that are hard for advanced users to find?

Joe: I think the key thing advanced users are looking for is a way to increase their efficiency. Mostly the things that make advanced users happy are the things that let them do things in one step that used to take a bunch of steps. In Windows 95 there are a ton of efficiency improvements like that. Two examples are the plus and minus expand control in the Explorer (which will make you a lot more efficient at browsing around than the File Manager ever did) , and the ALT+TAB window that now shows you what is coming up and what you just passed. In addition, the Windows 95 interface can be far more customized than the Windows 3.1 interface, so for shortcuts and customizing menu commands you can create an environment that is custom-tailored to the things that you do and the way you like to work, so you can be super-efficient.

TechNet: Do you have any idea how many people you talked to during the whole development cycle?

Joe: Yes. Our usability testing has had over 600 users. What that means is over 600 people have actually come into the building and sat in front of a PC running Windows 95 and done 2 hours of tasks on it and then answered questionnaires giving us feedback. And that usability testing has included comparative tests where we've had people try more than one platform and tell us how they compare them. It's included tests where we focus on particular components like Help or the Explorer, or shortcuts, and it's included tests to where we've done the generic "How well do you learn how to use Windows 95 doing the things that you do?" So that has been over 600 people.

We worked with 12 educators. We went on-site to about 10 companies and worked with 3 or 4 users in each company where we actually installed it in their environment and let them use it for their everyday work.. We would come back after a week or two and find out what they think to get a longer term sense of how it works. Then our Beta has been around 40,000 people and we have interactive conversations with those folks. We hear their feedback, we ask them what they think. We try to get them to direct us to the problems that need to be solved as we go along.

Training

TechNet: Many of our subscribers will be implementing the transition to Windows 95 for large numbers of users in their companies. What can they do to make that transition easier? What should be part of their training courses on Windows 95?

Joe: We know that upgrading a lot of users who aren't experienced is a major concern for MIS and support folks, so it's something we've invested a lot of time and energy in and we really want this to be easy for them. And the Usability Sciences study represents us being finished in our work to make a Windows 95 upgrade easy. We commissioned this study because we wanted to know objectively how hard it will be for typical Windows 3.1 users to move to Windows 95. And the answer is that in two hours they have it and they can perform more efficiently with it. They will be more productive after their first day of using Windows 95 because the user interface is easy to learn and it exposes the tasks that they want to do in the order they want to do them and it leads them along. And all the fundamentals have not changed at all: clicking, menus, buttons, and dragging are not different at all.

So the truth is it won't be hard. A couple of minor things will help get users up to speed more quickly: In training, make sure you explain to people when they see an icon, it's the real thing. All these Windows 3.1 users have gotten used to Program Manager where the icon they see for Microsoft Word isn't Microsoft Word. So one thing you can do is emphasize the fact that if you do see an icon, that's the real thing. And this is actually an obvious concept to a new user, but it's something that a Windows 3.1 user kind of has to adjust to. Once you tell them, they'll get it right away. You might want to show them a shortcut and explain how that is different, and not the real thing. That would be one good thing to do in training.

The Start menu is by far easiest to get to and most efficient means of doing anything in the operating system. You might also want to encourage people to try dragging and dropping. A lot of Windows 3.1 users have become skeptical that drag and drop will work. In Windows 95, it'll work everywhere. If you're doing a training session, show people they can drag and drop a file from a folder to the Desktop. Show them they can drag and drop a shortcut from the Desktop into a mail message. Show them they can drag and drop text from Word to a Folder or to the Desktop. So get them comfortable with the idea that drag and drop will work everywhere.

I encourage people to try using Help. We have made Help a lot better. It's not as lengthy as it used to be. If you go to the Start menu, choose Help, and type in a phrase that you want help on, you'll get a small window with a few steps telling you how to do it shortcut buttons that will take you there. So Help really is very helpful. It'll take you to the action you're trying to accomplish instead of showing you about the 10 steps you'll need to do it. Help has had a serious overhaul and is much better now.

TechNet:. This next question is passed along from Brock Kleweno, a TechNet subscriber at Carghill Company in Minneapolis. "My users really like the elements they know, the File Manager, the Program Manager, etc. How can I make this big change and make this interface easier for them?"

Joe: I'd say the key thing to do is to make sure you give your users a half hour to an hour to spend just getting comfortable with the user interface. You might want to do a class. If you don't think that is convenient, then have them run the Tour that comes with Windows 95 on the CD. The Tour is a great way to give people an interactive hands-on way to go through all the concepts and find out what My Computer is, what the Taskbar is for and try some tasks out themselves. The Tour is a great way to give them a gentle introduction to everything. That just encourages them to play. Windows 95 is a great self-learning environment: It leads users to the tasks they want to do. You'll just need to get them started, show them the Desktop, show them the Start menu, show them the Explorer and encourage them to just spend time with it.

A couple other things to think about ahead of time as you upgrade your users from 3.1: If people have upgraded from Windows 3.1 system where the Program Manager is just overloaded with program groups, then cleaning up the Start menu for those users before they use it would help a lot. Ideally, the best thing to do is to reduce the number of sub-folders under the Programs menu and actually put the icons for the main programs they use right there at the top level. We're going to provide a Start menu clean up wizard with a "tune-up kit" we're releasing soon, but is not quite ready yet. If you find that people are having a hard time with the Start menu, make sure that they don't have 40 sub-folders cascading on top of each other.

Also, if users seem to be worried about the fact that the Close button is where the Maximize button used to be, don't worry. It'll take them two to three days and they'll be used to it and they'll forget that the Maximize button was ever located there. Believe me, we know this for sure. We've checked this out on tons and tons of people and it's a two to three day adjustment period. If someone is switching between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, the adjustment is a little longer. But if someone is just going to Windows 95, it'll take them a couple days. That is probably the single biggest kind of annoying thing to get used to when you upgrade and it's not that bad.

TechNet: It's really the paradigm that is often the hardest piece for trainers. How much of the paradigm carries over from Windows 3.1, so that a training course on Windows 95 focuses mostly on surface or mostly new benefits, new features that haven't been part of the old paradigm because the underlying capability wasn't there?"

Joe: A training course on Windows 95 should focus on the concepts behind the user interface (such as "What is My Computer?" "What is the Network Neighborhood?"). and how to make them work for you. Part of the fundamental idea behind the design is that if we can provide some concepts that make sense by themselves and let people get a grand sense of what they mean, then that will lead them to being able to perform tasks. If somebody sees an icon from My Computer and you've taught them in training "Oh, everything on your computer is in there," then if they want to go and figure out how to change their mouse speed or how to move a file from their hard disk to their floppy drive, then they'll go to My Computer. So a training course on Windows 95 should emphasize those concepts in the user interface.

Windows 3.1 really didn't have any of these concepts. You had to teach applications and that is a lot harder to teach. In Windows 95 you can say, "Here is My Computer, open it up and you get this particular kind of window, which you pretty much already know how to use. It has a Menu bar just like every other window. You can select these things and choose commands; you already know how to do that. You can drag and drop things, but you already know how to do that. Conceptually My Computer has a hard disk and it has a Control Panel which contains controls for things like your mouse and keyboard. The Network Neighborhood is everything on the network. The Start menu is quick access to the most common tasks you do. "

TechNet: Is 20 minutes really a reasonable time to expect Windows 3.1 users to start picking up on common tasks in the new interface?

Joe: Yes. 20 minutes and you're ready to do all the common, typical things that you already knew. People tend to use only their personal experience to extrapolate what everyone else's experience is. The fact is, the more you know about Windows 3.1, the longer it'll take you to know as much about Windows 95. Somebody who has been studying Windows 3.1 for years and knows all these ins and outs, it'll take them a little while to learn that much material for Windows 95. Most typical users save programs, maybe they organize documents, they probably don't ever deal with printers or get the things on the network; they're going to be more productive in a couple of days than the last day they used Windows 3.1. We know this is the case. We've done lots of studies on this.

TechNet: Is there any other advice besides what we've covered already, that you'd give to MIS professionals?

Joe: The key thing is to get people to start basic introductions and the Tour and a class are great ways to do it. But you want to give them the hands-on experience of walking through the user interface elements and introduce them to the concepts and not worry so much about the details of the interactions. Just some general things: it's good if people take to it in groups because they'll benefit from each other's experience. If you can upgrade a whole bunch of people at the same time instead of dribbling them in, then they can share shortcuts and neat little efficient things they've discovered. Then you can start doing things like emailing people a bunch of shortcuts and that'll make your job a lot easier. The transition doesn't require a whole lot of advice. It'll be smooth.

The Components

TechNet: Let's talk a minute about the Explorer. It's clearly easier to use than File Manager, but it's a pretty big shift. What was the research that led you to change to single instance and single file window display for file management?

Joe: As I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest learning obstacles that people have is window management. And actually one of the most difficult things to learn in Windows 3.1 was working inside multiple document interface (MDI) applications like File Manager and Program Manager where you can have child windows contained inside a parent window. If I click the Minimize button, the down arrow in the upper right corner of the parent window, it will become an icon at the bottom of the screen. I click a down arrow in the upper right corner of the window called Main inside Program Manager, and it just disappears somewhere below the MDI frame, it can be a completely maddening thing for most users.

When we started on the Windows 95 path, we decided that none of the default applications that people would regularly use would be MDI because the learning curve associated with MDI is so high and the cost of "I lost a window and now I can't find it" is so high. Explorer is designed to be a high-end tool for power users or even intermediate users, to make them efficient in browsing around and doing file manipulations. In not making it MDI, we had to do some things in the design that would let you do all the things you've always been able to do just as efficiently with only one window. The drives are all in the tree, the Network Neighborhood is there and essentially you get a single Window in which you can browse anywhere. If you're used to using more than one Window in File Manager, then you have to adjust your method of working to work within one window in the Explorer. That is an adjustment that takes people a couple of days.

We've done what we call GOMS Analysis on a lot of common tasks. GOMS Analysis is sort of a way of quantifying how efficient a task is. It's really a measure of usability for high-end users. If you do Gom's Analysis on common tasks in Explorer versus File Manager, in most cases the characteristics of being single window and having drives in the tree, and also having the expand/contract controls, means that the Explorer is a lot more efficient than File Manager. But if you were really good at managing multiple windows, you have to adjust your thinking. The fact that most users are not good at multiple window management means they will be a lot more efficient with Explorer because they can figure out how to do it and they won't lose windows. On a percentage basis, not very many Windows users today are good at managing MDI windows.

As I said, we want to minimize learning obstacles for people. So we don't put MDI in their way as a learning obstacle in the new interface. There are certainly applications whose design is very appropriate for MDI. They tend to be applications that are higher end, have more advanced functionality or applications that you are willing or want to spend training time and have people invest in learning. The Windows shell is not something you want to invest a whole bunch of time training people to use.

TechNet: Where does the idea come from for an interface component like the Taskbar? How does it evolve?

Joe: Well, what happens first is we get a lot of feedback from users and from our product support people: What are the problems? What are the things you want to see resolved? Then we look at design principles from a semi-theoretical point of view that might be able to help with some of these problems. Doing an object-oriented design is one example of leveraging users' learning time: once people learn how to deal with some UI elements, they can deal with lots of elements. After that, we construct a component out of our own minds, out of our own creativity; we build it and we try it out on people. And the fact is, a component that we will think of off the top of our head and build and try out on people, is usually only 35% or 40% of what we need And we won't even figure out the things that will make it a lot better until we watch people use it.

The Taskbar Start menu actually is a great example of a component that went through heavy evolution. It was born out of a few principles, one of which was that we might have a region on the screen that is always visible, that people can go back to as an anchor. Another is that we want to provide a starting point for basic tasks. Those of your subscribers who have seen really early builds of Windows 95 know that the Taskbar now is really very different than how it started out. It started out having three menus that did not have words on them; they just had graphical images and this big white space where you could drag and drop stuff. And it's changed a lot since then. For example, you don't have to double-click to use it, and it's become the constant reliable means to getting to windows that are hidden from view. And it's those design changes that evolved out of getting feedback from users, getting feedback from educators and support people, MIS people and watching people in action and making modifications to the design until it was smooth enough, until it really delivered what we wanted it to. And that is true across the board.

Explorer is another example. We had an original version of Explorer that had particular behaviors and we found out that people found them really confusing so we would change them or take them out. Some specific features and functions were missing, and our feedback said "You've got to have this," so we put them in. It's very much an interactive process. And it would not be as good if we did not get so much constructive feedback from all the people we worked with. That is basically how it works.

TechNet: How about discoverability? What does that mean to a user?

Joe: Discoverability basically means, just as you want to do something or maybe even a moment before you knew you wanted to do something, you found the feature you needed. Discoverability is a huge problem in Windows 3.1. The only thing in Windows 3.1 in fact, that is discoverable are the icons for applications. That's it.

In Windows 95, there is a range I can describe that shows you how we pay attention to discoverability. The first most obvious example is the Start menu. A new user or someone who is getting to Windows 95 for the first time is thinking, "I want to run an application: Start/Program and there it is. Oh, I can't find something: Start/Find. I want to know what I'm doing: Start/Help." So in a very broad sense the common tasks are really, really discoverable. Then you get into more subtle things. For example, let's say you're in a folder, you're looking at a file, you want to change its name. You can select it, then go look in the menu, (which is what everyone does when they want to do something and they're not sure how to do it). Sure enough, there in the File menu is a Rename/Command. Ironically, some features that are very discoverable in Windows 95 are really hard to discover in other platforms. Take the Macintosh as an example. If you want to rename a file in the Macintosh, you have to know how to click on the thing and click on the name. That is not discoverable.

Another example: Let's say I only wanted to delete a file. On the Macintosh you must take that file and drag and drop it to the trash can, which is not only not very discoverable but maybe hugely inefficient for many people, especially power users. It's also very difficult for low-end users to perform because the trash can icon is on the Desktop and it's probably covered up by a bunch of windows. In Windows 95 you can select the file, go browse that menu-which is what all the users do when they want to find a feature-and sure enough, you find the Delete command. It still goes to the Recycle Bin, so you can still get it back. Those are a few examples of how paying attention to discoverability of the task that people really want makes Windows 95 by far the easiest-to-learn operating system platform available anywhere. That makes a huge difference.

TechNet: Brock Kleweno at Carghill sent along another question: He is finding that users who don't understand the concept of an executable file are having problems making shortcuts. He finds himself running to user's machines and building the shortcuts to executables on the network himself. What is an easy way to tell people how to do shortcuts?

Joe: One of the easy things he could do is instead of running around to everyone's machine and creating them, is create them on his machine, drag and drop them into a piece of email and send it to everyone. And then they can drag and drop into their Desktop or wherever. Or he could send them an email containing a shortcut to that place in the network and they can double-click and get a window showing everything on that server and they can choose the ones they want. Sending shortcuts in email is a great thing. He could create a search of a particular place on the network and send them the saved search and they can run it whenever they want and it'll search the server. Or he can give them a list of executables and they can pick the ones they want. So there are a whole bunch of different ways to do it.

Wrap Up

TechNet: The evolution of software, certainly Microsoft software, often consciously or unconsciously uses certain features in current products to get people used to the concepts used in future features, starting with the first Microsoft applications. In Word for DOS, using a mouse on a DOS machine prepared users for a new GUI. What are those things in Windows 95 that might similarly point the way to upcoming features?

Joe: The future of the Windows platform is very exciting. We have a fantastic team, we're keeping the team together, we have a great design idea. There are a lot of problems we really are excited to keep pushing on and have better solutions for, and really make people more productive with their PCs. I think there are some that we've done that you'll see us go farther with in future versions of the user interface. One is the notion of people being able to do things in a Task oriented way like what you see on the Start menu. There is a whole lot more we can do with that and it just seems to be a very, very natural leading way for people to work.

Another example of something you'll see us go a lot farther with is the ability of the operating system to find things for you. The Find window is actually a terrific thing to take a look at. It's really very easy to use. I think you'll see us making it a lot richer and faster in the future and we'll make it easier to use.

I think that another area we'll continue to push is lowering learning time: we're removing common learning obstacles for an even broader set of functionality so you can browse around more readily, you can find more information, you can do more things without having to double-click and without having to deal with hierarchies and lots of windows and all that stuff. We'd like to expand the set of things that people can do without bumping into learning obstacles, so I think you will see the design impacted by that kind of thing.

I think we'd like to go farther with making your PC something you'll be attached to, and really enjoy using. There is a lot we can learn from things that we just dabbled in Windows 95 making the environment fun and appealing and enjoyable place to be. Also, one of things worth mentioning is that we've learned a lot about how we can make people able to work together and make networking seamless and make PCs great devices for communications. This is a huge area we're spending time and energy on, in future releases, so I think the next version of the Windows user interface will be easier to learn, and will make it possible for people to really be connected and communicating and working together. That's the kind of stuff we want it to do.

We'll definitely go farther with document-centricity, with the ability, for example, to work in a folder and create a new document there. There is a whole lot we can do with New and we've been getting a lot of good suggestions on that already.

TechNet: What would you suggest to help users get into this "document-centric" way of thinking?

Joe: Probably the best way to get people to start thinking in a document-centered way is to get them to use folders to organize their documents. And I say that because there are lots of things that administrators could do to help out here. If people are going to work on a particular project, create the folder for them on a server and email everyone a shortcut to that. Tell them to drag it to their Desktop or drag it to their Start menu, and work from the folder.

Let's say I'm going to do an accounting project so I create an Accounting folder on the server and I send everyone in the Accounting group a shortcut to it. My email message says drag this icon to your Start button, then start from the Start button every day. They click on the Start button, then click on the Accounting folder and it opens up. Now, instead of going to Applications, they can work inside this folder. If they want to create a new spreadsheet, they can do "New Excel Spreadsheet". It'll create one for them, then they can edit away. Or somebody can actually structure the whole work project for them by creating documents with particular names and then people can add content to them. So probably the best way to get people to start thinking document-centrically is to give them pre-made folders or projects that they can create documents inside. The most clearly intuitive part of the process is when you can create a document without ever having to go to Save As and navigate. Someone already put it there.

TechNet: Reaction to your work on the user interface has really been positive so far. What's your outlook on what your ultimate goal is?

I really believe I have the coolest job at Microsoft. We're going to make people in companies more productive. We're going to enable them to do more and like their computers better and get more out of technology. It's a great job.

Joe Belfiore is the Lead Program Manager on the Windows 95 user interface team responsible for the overall design of the user interface of Windows 95, including the shell and applets. (He's also the Western Washington Foundation President of the Hugh O'Brian Youth Foundation and works with the Seattle Junior Chamber of Commerce. He also likes to wakeboard on Lake Sammamish and is hoping to learn an "air-360" before the ship of Windows 95.)

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