| Home > Technology > I always thought using a mouse with Windows was flaky - here's evidence that it's true and even worse: in Vista with Aero it's worse than in Xp. Is it back to the drawing board for Microsoft? |
| I always thought using a mouse with Windows was flaky - here's evidence that it's true and even worse: in Vista with Aero it's worse than in Xp. Is it back to the drawing board for Microsoft? | | Date Created: 26 Feb, 2007, 01:43 AM |
 This may come as something of a surprise to some readers, but I live in a dual-OS world: Mac OS X and Windows Xp (both Sp1 and Sp2).
The latter I use for specialty programs located on a dual-partitioned hard drive in a generic Pentium IV box. Here's where I use my mission critical professional applications, such as Virtual reality environments (for anxiety-based conditions), Biofeedback and a new program called "FreezeFrame" from Heartmath inc. used to measure heart rate variability and its role in emotional regulation.
None of these pro. apps. have the polished look of even average shareware on the Mac platform. They all look like they have been designed with an interface only a programmer's mother could like, if you get my drift.
Let's just say that these very expensive programs and associated hardware are somewhat inelegant in their appearance. Business-like. Not minimalist, but with minimal effort given to the user spending hours interacting with it. Just as well I spend only some of the day employing them, and the rest of the time my computer interaction is with OS X Tiger and my Powerbook.
Ever since I first played with Windows in version '95, then '98, then 2000, then Xp, I have been consistently unimpressed with the sloppiness of its mouse placement. Its movement across the screen has always seemed "ragged" and inaccurate - a bad case of the wobbles.
I could not easily fathom why anyone in the creative industries where pixel-perfect navigation around the screen was essential would use, say, Photoshop in Windows. Perhaps because at one time when the Mac and its Motorola chips were seriously underpowered compared to Intel offerings for Windows, it was worth the compromise to get faster renderings.
Somehow, the interface just never seemed slick enough - accurate enough - to justify the compromise in my eyes. Since the two principal forms of interaction with a PC are via keyboard and mouse, it always bothered me that mouse sloppiness was indicative of sloppiness in other areas of Windows.
Call it cognitive bias, but I prefer the description Don Norman offers when he talks about great audio amplifiers being spoilt by cheap "pots" used to control volume, balance and other controls, perhaps for the sake of a 50c oil-filled pot which would give the controls a nice, smooth professional feel. It's a bit like listening to the sound of your car doors closing, and the satisfying "thump" some cars offer against the tinny sound of others. Doesn't inspire confidence does it?
Well, that's what it feels like so much of the time when I use Windows. The great irony is that it's the enterprise marketplace's OS of choice, but its interface is so... unprofessional and uninspiring. Just enough to get the work done, I suppose if that work is crunching Excel spreadsheets.
But use it for eliciting creative efforts? No, it's too uninspiring.
Now that Vista has been released, is there hope that Windows will make up the slack and give Tiger a run for its money in terms of user interface?
Certainly, Aero - if your PC is up to it - has a look and feel which many will find appealing and approaching Tiger's appearance. And certainly, mainstream reviews of Vista, especially those combining an interview with Bill Gates, seem to have always included OS X in their discussions.
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But is Vista's new look and feel an improvement of Xp, and does it come close to Tiger?
I'm asking about "useability" here, not just prettiness or aesthetics which are subjective. No, I'm asking about whether you get work done more efficiently in Vista with Aero than other platforms, such as Xp and Tiger.
Well, someone else had the same thoughts, and fortunately, the wherewithall to conduct repeatable measures.
In my email yesterday, I located a research report from Pfeiffer Consulting. Now Pfeiffer are one of a number of companies which can be commissioned to provide reports which on the surface appear to offer objective analyses. For myself, whenever I read reports commissioned by one company which includes comparisons between it and its competitors I look closely for hidden bias and methods.
So when you go look at the original reports whose links I'll offer in a moment, please conduct your own due diligence while acknowledging whatever cognitive bias you bring to the report.
What did Pfeiffer examine in its report of February 20, called "User Interface Friction (UIF) Report"?
Well, you'll know about "useability" as a concept. Interface friction is a subsystem if you like of useability. Here's how Pfeiffer defines it:
"UIF is the resistance imposed upon a user-guided process through the operating system and the way the user interface reacts. In most cases, it has nothing to do with functionality: we use the term User Interface Friction to define the difference in fluidity and productivity that can be observed when running the same program or procedure on different computer systems, or when trying to achieve the goal on two similar digital devices."
So it's looking at things other than Finder versus Explorer, or Start button versus Apple icon if you prefer.
Here's the question Pfeiffer wanted to answer:
"... how does the new Aero interface stack up compared to Windows XP and Mac OS X in terms of low-level user interface efficiency? Given the previous lackluster track-record of Windows in terms of User Interface Friction, it seemed important to measure if the new release improved on some of the weak spots of previous releases, such as menu latency and mouse precision."
In more particular terms:
"The benchmarks covered three distinct aspects of User Interface Friction: Menu latency, common desktop operations, and mouse precision and efficiency, a factor particularly important in tasks that require precise positioning of the mouse."
Which means that anyone in the creative domains needing precise mouse moving and pointing would do well to consider the results of Pfeiffer's benchmarking.
Shall we cut to the chase, and I'll include links to the webpage and report after? Here's some of what Pfeiffer reports:
"There is no doubt that the Aero user interface provides a much slicker user interface than previous releases of Windows: Vista includes a much more sophisticated rendering engine that can scale both text and images in a much more aesthetic way than, for instance, Windows XP.
In addition, some functionality provided by Windows Vista can make a user more efficient, since the operating system provides better feedback when several documents are open, and can speed up the process of switching between open windows.
But while the graphics of the new user interface are more sophisticated, Windows Vista, and particularly the new Aero user interface design, fared less well in the User Interface Friction benchmarks than Windows XP. Mac OS X came out as the clear overall winner in these benchmarks."
You're not surprised with the overall winner, are you? But did you expect (or even care) that old fashioned Xp outdid Vista on the benchmarks? I think you should care, because it tells us something of what Microsoft was aiming at for all its billions of dollars and thousands of man hours spent over fiver years on Vista, and what it achieved. Moreover, if you really want to see Tiger now, or Leopard soon, in your enterprise location, it might be wise to let the powers that be know about Vista's shortcomings before they throw out their Xp-based PCs and slavishly updated to Vista-based ones.
Three important parameters could be mentioned to your CIO as interfering with getting your work done effectively. The three Pfeiffer examined were:
1. Menu latency (time needed for menus to drop and submenus to display)
2. Desktop Operations ("opening folders, deleting elements" etc.)
3. Mouse precision ("measur(ing) both the time necessary to complete a series of precision tasks and the number of errors) using the same mouse and mousepad across platforms).
You can read which systems were compared, but the results clearly point to the superiority of OS X over Windows, and Xp over Vista.
One quote from the Pfeiffer report, related to Mouse precision:
"The most preoccupying results of these benchmarks concerned mouse precision and efficiency: in these benchmarks (which measure both the time necessary to complete a series of precision tasks and the number of errors, and used the same mouse and mouse-pad for all tests), Windows Vista scored significantly worse than Windows XP. Windows Vista scored a Mouse Precision Error Coefficient of 0.52, compared with 0.40 for Windows XP, and 0.08 (!) for Mac OS X" (Original exclamation mark and bolding)
Now, in case you haven't got time to chase down the original Pfeiffer (free) publication, here are his concluding remarks:
"As far as Windows Vista was concerned, it was important to conduct the necessary benchmarks to compare the new release with currently installed versions of Windows. In the light of the results, the core recommendation coming out of this research is simple: before deciding on an upgrade to Windows Vista, it seems wise to conduct thorough productivity analysis in a concrete workflow situation to see if User Interface Friction here would negatively impact overall efficiency. This is particularly true in creative industries such as design, publishing and photo retouching, where mouse precision is a major concern. Overall, Mac OS X remains the most fluid environment of the three systems tested.
Likewise, the viability of the Aero user interface in production environments has to be assessed in a concrete situation, to see if the proposed usability features it brings compensate for the slower user interface, or if the Classic user interface would offer higher productivity. (User input is essential here: for some users, user interface friction is barely noticeable, while others are highly susceptible to it.) (My italics)
For those who wish to see the original report in its entirety, the link is here.
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