Windows 8: "We know our customers" manifested

I remember where I was when I first read about Windows 8 - at a hotel in Atlanta for a work trip. As a technophile, the capabilities presented looked stunning - especially from the Steve-Ballmer-era-Microsoft. But the researcher in me immediately wondered how this new Windows would be received by people who really liked Windows 7, and most importantly, why they were getting rid of the Start Menu. I recall thinking, I don't know who did this #research, but I'd love to see the data supporting this.

As most people reading this will recall, Windows 8 was a touch-only version of Windows. Rumor had it (supported by my friends and contacts within Microsoft) that Steve Ballmer was embarrassed by Microsoft's lack of an actual iPhone competitor, and despite what his advisors (read: researchers) told him, he insisted that a touch-first experience not only is what people wanted but that he would force them to like it by taking away the Start Menu. After laughing off Apple's original iPhone as a gimmicky toy, he was going to make up lost ground.

When #UXResearchers preach about "customer first," "user first," or "consumer first," this is exactly what they fear. The most dreaded words a UX practitioner fears are, "We know our customers" coming from a senior executive. Customers are humans, and humans are constantly evolving, complex beings who are predominantly change-adverse. It is ironic that Microsoft's successes of the past were founded on this very principle.

From the first time Start Me Up by The Rolling Stones played introducing Windows 95 to August 1, 2008, when Windows 8 launched, the Start Menu was the constant in how Windows worked. Even Windows 95 practically all of the programs designed for its predecessor versions. Put simply, Microsoft's mantra could be summarized as, "We're backward compatible." But Steve Ballmer knew better, he claimed.

Windows 8 would become the most reviled version of Windows ever released, surpassing even the oft-maligned Windows Vista, which was assailed for requiring more powerful hardware than many older computers had at its launch. Unlike Vista, which could be coaxed to run on older systems with a video card upgrade, there was (at launch time) no way to escape Steve Ballmer's vision of what Windows would be, so consumers and corporations did something they hadn't done in decades: they passed.

When #UXResearchers preach about "customer first," "user first," or "consumer first," this is exactly what they fear. The most dreaded words a UX practitioner fears are, "We know our customers" coming from a senior executive. Customers are humans, and humans are constantly evolving, complex beings who are predominantly change-adverse. It is ironic that Microsoft's successes of the past were founded on this very principle.

It would take the release of Windows 8.1 (released over a year after Windows 8.0) to begin to get people to take the version seriously, and so eager was Microsoft to banish it to the dustbin of history that they skipped Windows 9 entirely and released Windows 10 with the Start Menu back where it had been and the touch-first screen an optional feature on touch-enabled devices, turned off by default. In plain language: they gave customers what they wanted all along. Steve Ballmer was gone, and Satya Nadella was smart enough to know he didn't know his customers, and he listened to his research team.

Supporters of Steve Ballmer are quick to point out the success of some of his initiatives like Xbox and to be fair, the Xbox ecosystem is large. But the Xbox was a new initiative, and each successive Xbox console has run many if not all the games designed for the previous version of the console. One cannot compare a new product, such as Xbox, to a complete overhaul of a flagship operating system extant for nearly 20 years. Ballmer (naïvely?) believed that the success of the Xbox meant he knew things that Bill Gates did not—or more to the point, that he knew the customers better than the people advising Bill Gates.

How many billions of dollars Microsoft lost under Steve Ballmer's "I know our customers" style of leadership including not only Windows 8, but the near-destruction of Nokia and the discontinuation of Windows Phone certainly easily places it north of $10B US dollars.

Whether you call it #marketresearch, #consumerresearch, or #uxresearch, the commonality is research. If you're working on a refresh or new version of an existing product or service, it is imperative that you conduct research about the people you expect to pay for the thing(s) you are building or designing, and that you adapt your efforts to meet theirs so that your product avoids the undesirable company of Windows 8 in the annals of history.