While working on Microsoft's newest operating system, Bob Graf, the engineer who heads the company's user interface team, discovered something surprising -- if not "revolutionary," as he describes it -- about the way most people use computers.
"I visited 50 or more people in their homes," he said, "and I was asking each of them to name the seven applications that they use most often. And the thing is, most people, when they sit down to think about it, they can only come up with three or four applications they use. And I was just amazed at that."
After more studies, Graf found that 77 percent of computer users launch four applications, at most, in a single session. This was a kind of computing epiphany, Graf said, and it led to his team's decision to give Windows XP an icon-free, "clean desktop," as well as a less cluttered start menu.
But for all of Microsoft's alleged power in the marketplace, it now appears that the clean desktop isn't going to make its way into the hands of too many computer buyers anytime soon. That's because most computer makers are adding scores of icons to the XP desktop, in return for cash from various media and technology companies who consider the desktop a vital ad space.
And that's really too bad, because the clean desktop and other usability improvements in XP are among the new OS's best features. Though XP's interface, with its bright green-and-blue color scheme, appears kid-like, the uncluttered desktop seemed to deliver on one of Graf's main goals for XP: making the system easy for novices.
The desktop, Graf said, is generally very confusing for computer neophytes.
"A lot of people don't clear off their desktops because they don't know what's on there and they don't want to delete anything important," he said. This might sound like a trivial thing to advanced computer users, who delete icons without giving them a second thought, but "the bulk of our users would fall in a beginner level," Graf said.
"We found that a large percentage don't understand the concept of a shortcut, for example. Many people use their desktops for temporary storage, and we also saw that a lot of people spend time looking for the launch-points for applications, especially when the desktop is cluttered. This increases frustration, 'task-time,' and 'failure.'"
So taking that into account, Graf's team decided to design a desktop with only one icon -- the recycle bin. "That was a major decision," he said. "We know people use the desktop for temporary storage, and if we removed the recycle bin that might have suggested that it was no longer possible to do that."
It is indeed still possible to use XP's desktop for temporary storage or for shortcuts, but Graf hoped that by giving them a completely icon-free desktop, new users would have been discouraged from slowly cluttering up their screens. Their two most frequently used applications -- e-mail and the browser -- would enjoy pride-of-place on the start menu, and other often-used apps would automatically show up there as well.
In studies, he found that this system significantly increased users' task times. He described one incident: "I have a video clip that shows a gentleman searching through numerous icons on the (old Windows) desktop, looking for e-mail. He's worked for about five or six minutes, and then he gives up. Another person, using XP, sees this start menu, clicks it and finds it immediately. It's very obvious here. There's a big green button that says 'Start.'"
Graf said that Microsoft has also commissioned independent studies of the new interface, but a spokeswoman said that the company wasn't releasing those results just yet.
But it's not clear that new users will see the same "big usability gains" in the icon-addled XP systems they'll see in stores.
Of the big computer makers, only Gateway plans to ship a clean desktop. A spokeswoman for the company echoed Graf's comments, saying "For some time we've been getting feedback that all the icons were very confusing." She said that the company will still include some promotional icons in a special section of the start menu, but that it "was not just looking to get some cash" by placing ads on users' screens.
Compaq and Dell both said that they plan to include icons, and though Hewlett Packard did not return calls for comment, the Los Angeles Times recently reported that its systems, too, won't have a clean desktop.
The Compaq and Dell spokesmen both said they didn't think the icons would pose a problem to users. "From our standpoint, we want to give our customers the most benefits we can," said Compaq's David Albritton.
"Compared to what the desktop looks like in previous PCs, this list (of 12 icons) is very small, and we're confident that our customers will be satisfied with what we're providing."
