I read a recent article by Joel Spolsky at his blog Joel On Software, where he discusses the many options that users of Microsoft's new operating system, Windows Vista, will have to log off, shut down, sleep, etc. The article, Choices = Headaches, argues that Windows Vista has too many options to “leave”. How many is too many, you ask? Nine to be exact! How do you explain that to your Mom? Let me quote Joel:

Every time you want to leave your computer, you have to choose between nine, count them, nine options: two icons and seven menu items. The two icons, I think, are shortcuts to menu items. I'm guessing the lock icon does the same thing as the lock menu item, but I'm not sure which menu item the on/off icon corresponds to.

He goes on to argue that the options should be reduced to one, maybe two options and states why each one should be eliminated/combined. In response to Joel's article, Moishe Lettvin, a software engineer who used to work for Microsoft on the “Windows Shutdown” team (yes, 8 people to design that feature/menu) gives us some insight into how this was written.

Interestingly, Arno Gourdol, a former Mac OS X Finder Lead at Apple, posted a response to the posts on his blog about how the same feature was written for Apple's OS X. “The Design of the Mac OS X Shutdown Feature” provides some interesting insight into what went on at Apple and how it greatly contrast Microsoft's process.

Think this doesn't relate to us as designers? Think again. No matter what we do in web design, we are giving or taking away options for our end users. Every day we have a choice to make things either more complex with more “features” or simpler with less “features”. Our job is to simplify. Who cares if we could make 13 different ways to leave a computer. On my PowerBook, 99.999% of the time, I just close the lid.

Just let me leave the computer. That's all I ask!

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