From neowin.net:

Oddly enough, a documentary called "Code: Debugging the Gender Gap" would seem to dispute the notion that Clippy was popular with focus groups before its launch. Former Microsoft executive Roz Ho stated."

Most of the women thought the characters were too male and that they were leering at them. So we’re sitting in a conference room. There’s me and, I think, like, 11 or 12 guys, and we’re going through the results, and they said, ‘I don’t see it. I just don’t know what they’re talking about.’ And I said, ‘Guys, guys, look, I’m a woman, and I’m going to tell you, these animated characters are male-looking.’

Omg. They're absolutely right.

Be as open to seeing bias as you'd like, you will always have a blindspot. Until today, this was one of mine.

Labels: microsoft, microsoft fail, sexism, Word

Remember Joel Spolsky's "Let Me Go Back" letter? I do.

Microsoft, specifically Microsoft Office, doesn't.

I'm obviously trying to save the file to my local drive. And I obviously would prefer not to have to navigate that horrendous UI Word has now to move from OneDrive to my drive.

For an app that still impressively honors old keystroke recipes -- like alt-I, B (alt-insert, break) to insert a page break -- this really offends me (haha) as a user. They are actively preventing you from saving to your drive. (This is not new. This is simply the first time I got aggravated enough to post.)

This is not progress. This is a commercial for OneDrive.

... but...

Fewer keystrokes is better! Let me go back!

Labels: cloud, hats of money, microsoft, microsoft fail, office, UI, usability, users