<story><title>The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)</title><url>http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bradford</author><text>I started at MS during Vista and I&amp;#x27;ve been involved (sometimes tangentially) with Windows ever since.  This is all my opinion, but It&amp;#x27;s been very interesting seeing the decision making process change over time.&lt;p&gt;If I had to summarize the change, I&amp;#x27;d say that it&amp;#x27;s evolved from an expertise-based system to a data based system.  The reason why eight people were present at every planning meeting is because their expert opinion was the primary tool used in decision making.  In addition to poor decisions, this had two very negative outcomes:&lt;p&gt;1) reputation was fiercely fought for. Individuals feared that if they were ever incorrect, the damage to their reputation would limit their ability to impact future decisions and eventually lead to career death.  Whether this actually happened or not is irrelevant; the fear itself caused overt caution and consensus seeking.&lt;p&gt;2) In the absence of data, an eloquent negotiator is often able to obtain their desired outcome, no matter how sub-optimal that outcome might be.&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, I see data used a lot more, hence the telemetry.  A while ago, in response to criticism of Windows telemetry habits, I wrote:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Telemetry is, by now, a fundamental part of the engineering process. Products that don&amp;#x27;t incorporate it are going to be clobbered by products that do. Microsoft didn&amp;#x27;t start this paradigm, but I think they had to incorporate it in order to stay competitive.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I understand that telemetry is still a delicate issue, but the expertise based decision making of yester-year truly sucked for many, and I don&amp;#x27;t see a viable alternative.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wrs</author><text>Putting on my asbestos suit... I started the telemetry project (aka SQM or CEIP) at Microsoft when I was on the MSN Explorer team. (Then Office got excited about it, then SQL Server and Windows and nearly everyone else.)&lt;p&gt;The original inspiration was being in a meeting much like the one described, where people were arguing about whether we should optimize the UI for 640x480, 800x600, or 1024x768 screens. The &amp;quot;argument&amp;quot; consisted almost entirely of anecdotes. I thought &amp;quot;Why don&amp;#x27;t we just measure how big the screens actually are, and then I won&amp;#x27;t have to attend any more meetings like this?&amp;quot; It turned out a lot of other people felt that way.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)</title><url>http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bradford</author><text>I started at MS during Vista and I&amp;#x27;ve been involved (sometimes tangentially) with Windows ever since.  This is all my opinion, but It&amp;#x27;s been very interesting seeing the decision making process change over time.&lt;p&gt;If I had to summarize the change, I&amp;#x27;d say that it&amp;#x27;s evolved from an expertise-based system to a data based system.  The reason why eight people were present at every planning meeting is because their expert opinion was the primary tool used in decision making.  In addition to poor decisions, this had two very negative outcomes:&lt;p&gt;1) reputation was fiercely fought for. Individuals feared that if they were ever incorrect, the damage to their reputation would limit their ability to impact future decisions and eventually lead to career death.  Whether this actually happened or not is irrelevant; the fear itself caused overt caution and consensus seeking.&lt;p&gt;2) In the absence of data, an eloquent negotiator is often able to obtain their desired outcome, no matter how sub-optimal that outcome might be.&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, I see data used a lot more, hence the telemetry.  A while ago, in response to criticism of Windows telemetry habits, I wrote:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Telemetry is, by now, a fundamental part of the engineering process. Products that don&amp;#x27;t incorporate it are going to be clobbered by products that do. Microsoft didn&amp;#x27;t start this paradigm, but I think they had to incorporate it in order to stay competitive.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I understand that telemetry is still a delicate issue, but the expertise based decision making of yester-year truly sucked for many, and I don&amp;#x27;t see a viable alternative.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bo1024</author><text>Very interesting and thanks for the post. Does Windows 10 actually conduct ongoing A&amp;#x2F;B tests and use telemetry to evaluate them? (for example the interface used by two people on two different computers might look different, or something)&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m intrigued but still very skeptical about the effectiveness of the data-based approach to UI design. That seems to be an area where local, hillclimbing optimization can lead to a mess of conflicting decisions across the OS.</text></comment>