by johndavidback on 11/22/17, 5:33 PM with 293 comments
by CydeWeys on 11/22/17, 7:14 PM
I cannot even begin to count how many times I've tried to search for an application by name that I know is installed, only for it not to be found, then have to manually navigate in Windows Explorer to Program Files (or Program Files x86, damn you Microsoft) and launch it by double-clicking on the executable itself, which was named exactly what I thought it was and yet Cortana couldn't find it.
I never want to perform a web search from the Windows start menu. If I want a web search I'll do it in Chrome's address bar. When I type "notepad" I want it to launch Notepad, not query the web!
Does anyone think that Cortana is an improvement? How did it even get launched in this state?
by nerflad on 11/22/17, 6:23 PM
I hate this kind of writing. It undermines the otherwise good point the author has.
by eterm on 11/22/17, 6:38 PM
It can't even fuzzy search. Type "view event" and it brings up "view event logs", if you type "view events" it instead searches bing, in edge, for "view events".
Edge isn't even my default browser. Bing isn't my default search engine, and I didn't want to browse the web.
Any slight deviation from an exact phrase and it goes straight from "here's the program you want to run" to popping up it's search engine.
by TheGRS on 11/22/17, 11:13 PM
I can see Microsoft put a lot of work into making Win10 user friendly, but it seems like their designers don't understand their users or something. OSX has some bizarre interactions as well (like Finder, wtf is happening there), but for the most part it just works.
I guess I don't really know what I want my operating system to do precisely. I want it to be smooth, I want it to open programs quickly, I want it to move files around without hassle, and I want it to be secure while also be easily extensible. Unfortunately there's a lot of different interpretations of what those things should be. I can appreciate that making a world class operating system on top of decades of legacy code is difficult, but I also need to say: WTF is half of this shit?
Windows doesn't even come with a simple key reassignment. I had to download SharpKeys to set Caps Lock as Ctrl. That sort of thing just comes with OSX.
by neves on 11/22/17, 6:55 PM
I've tried and failed. I don't know why it is necessary an auxiliar app just to index my executables just to be able to type a few letters and start them quickly.
by wvenable on 11/22/17, 7:01 PM
by sebringj on 11/22/17, 6:22 PM
by cbhl on 11/22/17, 6:40 PM
GMail, for example, only parses out package numbers if the retailer sends schema.org markup for it. (https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/parcel-...)
by Theodores on 11/22/17, 6:38 PM
Not everyone uses gmail. But, in the UK, for ecommerce, you can fully expect more than 50% of the order emails to be gmail addresses. Therefore the xml snippets approach is worth doing.
by moonman272 on 11/22/17, 7:22 PM
by magice on 11/22/17, 7:11 PM
I mean, I can almost imagine how this thing happens. Someone somewhere sometime said, "hey, wouldn't it be cool if xyz?" Someone else replied with "oh yeah, and it's not THAT hard!" And the PM is probably like "well, low risk, too, so whatever you wish."
Then, the feature is thrown together, with or without explicit planning. It probably attracts way higher attention than expected, because either it is hooked into mechanism intended for real important stuff or it can be demoed so nicely (imagine: if you are the developer doing demoing, you probably have the damned tracking number ready for copy and paste). It does not support all operations, because no one looks at it twice after some brief "yo, so cool" moment.
The annoyance may or may not have a bug associated with it somewhere. But let's be realistic. If you are a PM, which one would you choose: "some nobody-care feature is not easy to use" or "if you stand on 1 leg, jump 3 times, press the code of Mordor, Windows seg faults itself". The 1st one is vague and, let's be frank, not that big of a deal. The 2nd one is a big deal: data loss and all manners of unspeakable conditions may break loose. So, any PM would do the 2nd bug first.
I mean, seriously, how would you ensure this tiny corner (which a comment below actually says, "I did not realize it exist") is "easy to use"? No automation tests can catch it. Demoing (again, the developers know how to use it and probably come prepared) won't catch it. A/B testing probably won't even get to it. Its bugs (except if that bugs involving Start menu crashing down) probably have priority between "when I have better work-life balance" and "when the machine is capable of fixing its own issues."
--
I will agree that all of these don't justify for a shitty experience. Shitty experiences, no matter how small, are shitty. But then, even LaTeX, perfected as it is, annoys me once in a while. Even Emacs, glorious as it is, has "I swear I will switch to Eclipse" moments. And Scheme has about 70 different ways of doing OO programming, none of which really works for my little case.
So, maybe a bit more love/understanding? It probably helps your (i.e. the users') blood pressure anyway.
by camhenlin on 11/22/17, 8:41 PM
by lousken on 11/22/17, 8:26 PM
But my main problem with searching is when I search for settings and windows apps. That's just pure trash. There're no aliases so if you don't know exactly how MS named the functionality you're fucked. And if you know the english word for it, it doesn't show up either. And the worst thing: if you KNEW how it used to be called but not the current translation you're also fucked. E.g. in english you search for screen saver. In czech it used to be "Spořič obrazovky" but now it's "Šetřič obrazovky". (btw neither of these even show up in the creators update, but in falls they fixed it and "Šetřič obrazovky" will return correct result).
Another thing that bothers me with search is diacritics, you have to use it if you want to find anything that has it. And gl with that when using english keyboard layout.
It's increadibly frustrating to use and I've mostly given up on it and use powershell whenever I can. That doesn't fix my problems with diacritics when searching documents though.
by rdtsc on 11/22/17, 9:35 PM
That means users will get frustrated quickly if it misunderstands or or makes other mistakes. It completely breaks the interaction. To add on top of it, it makes the human feel stupid having to enunciate or repeat the same thing over and over. If they'd would be typing into a search box for search application, they'd be fine with it not working because it's just a stupid program. As soon as the program is an "AI" or an "assistance" it better be darn good, or it will make users very angry and frustrated.
There is also some little part of the human brain that says "oh you think you can act like a human, let's how you respond to this", so they will deliberately mess with it or provide it with confusing input just to see what would happen. (I saw customers do it, they were already frustrated because of a different reason, but used the speech interaction API to really demonstrate how broken the product is). Can't blame them, it was broken, but it was a useful less on to learn.
by trynumber9 on 11/23/17, 3:17 AM
And to top it off Spotlight shows me accurate previews of Excel and Word documents. But Cortana, another Microsoft product, does not. Perhaps that's a compliment to the team that makes Office for Mac.
by api on 11/22/17, 7:23 PM
by hnnsj on 11/22/17, 7:25 PM
How is this entire post anything but "getting worked up as hell"? Seems to me to be a case of "when other people complain, they're whiny, but when _I_ get annoyed, heads must roll!".
by cjsuk on 11/22/17, 6:27 PM
by Havoc on 11/22/17, 10:31 PM
No MS I don't feeling spending half an hour figuring out what the hell is going on in that UX. That pretty much says it all about how intuitive it is dear designer...
by Yhippa on 11/22/17, 7:45 PM
To be honest all of these smart digital assistants have failed me as of late. I used to be able to just text-to-speech searches straight to Google and it did what I wanted to for the most part. Now when I try just any type of reasonable query (I think so at least) Alexa or Google Assistant usually comes back with "Sorry I don't know how to do that" which is frustrating.
Reminds me of the VR hype. Maybe I should just wait for 10 years and this stuff will finally be usable.
by icc97 on 11/22/17, 9:13 PM
by ChuckMcM on 11/23/17, 12:18 AM
From the perspective of a dialog system I see it as a bunch of assumptions that are made prior to engaging in the dialog. And given that hypothesis I have looked at people interactions to see how people deal with this sort of 'communication mismatch' and how they detect it.
Certainly there are repeated asks of the same question slightly rephrased as an indicator of a mismatch, but there is also a general resistance to interacting. So with people if someone gets frustrated talking with you and stops, I've seen people use that as a signal to seek out an understanding of where the mismatch is, but in computer dialoging systems that check, and subsequent re-framing is completely missing.
The other thing I've observed is that often a dialog system seems to try to be 'human' in its interaction but because it is a computer the user communicates to it like a 'user' not like a human. Adding what might be relevant search terms to the utterance as an example. For example, I listened as a person pitched to Siri "I want pizza" and was frustrated at the response ("This is what I've found on the web about Pizza") And added "I want Dominos Pizza" (additional search term, vendor name). But Siri appeared stuck on being unable to parse an acceptable language target for 'I want'.
Changing that to "Call dominos" or "Where is the nearest Dominos" works well because it as a pre-built in answer action (Telephone call, map directions).
All of this the "level 4" version of autonomous conversations where the computer can navigate what it is you are saying and what you expect as a response.
by cellis on 11/22/17, 7:40 PM
by nanodano on 11/22/17, 8:19 PM
by downrightmike on 11/22/17, 10:33 PM
by ndh2 on 11/23/17, 7:55 AM
I use an old, discontinued app called Executor that I configure manually. It's not a whole lot better in terms of matching, but, because it can be configured, it is much better in terms of getting it to do what I want. It definitely can't track your packages, though.
by franzpeterfolz on 11/22/17, 9:05 PM
How do I know? Took the number and looked it up at ups.
I think, I'm not sure, but I think, if ups delivers on time. Cortana will give you a message, stating the package will arive tomorrow right on 24th of November. Just one day before.
Maybe John David Back will give us an update, when his package arrived.
BTW delivery times in the US are terrible compared to Germany. Next Day delivery is the state of art. Germany is also much smaller in comparison.
by gerdesj on 11/23/17, 2:00 AM
When these things do finally get their act together, we will all live in a world that is different from the one we live in now. I hope it is a better one.
by drumttocs8 on 11/22/17, 8:21 PM
by 2close4comfort on 11/22/17, 8:39 PM
by tehwebguy on 11/23/17, 9:55 AM
I pulled my hair out one day after telling Siri a half dozen times to “remind me about [an appointment] in two weeks”
It kept making an immediate reminder that said “appointment into weeks” - into weeks??? When would someone even say that unless they were saying something like “Days turn into weeks”???
by edgarvaldes on 11/22/17, 6:34 PM
by harshbutfair on 11/23/17, 6:27 AM
If I type "skype" the default option is to install Skype for Business, even though I already have it installed.
It is very unintuitive. It is as bad as the search in Jira/Confluence, and that's saying something.
by loopdoend on 11/23/17, 2:42 AM
I mean if you have the URL just go to the URL and track your package.
I’m pretty sure Cortana was designed as a human interface and not a web browser...
by Lewton on 11/23/17, 8:32 AM
Slowly type out eclipse in search bar
Watch it randomly switch between the two at each character
Randomly as in, sometimes it suggests oxygen on ecl and sometimes it suggests neon on ecl
by popeko on 11/23/17, 5:16 AM
by modzu on 11/23/17, 5:01 AM
by xh3n1 on 11/23/17, 1:43 PM
by DoodleBuggy on 11/22/17, 6:45 PM