http://www.useit.com/alertbox/windows-8.html
"Summary:
Hidden features, reduced discoverability, cognitive overhead from dual environments, and reduced power from a single-window UI and low information density. Too bad.With the recent launch of Windows 8 and the Surface tablets, Microsoft has reversed its user interface strategy. From a traditional Gates-driven GUI style that emphasized powerful commands to the point of featuritis, Microsoft has gone soft and now smothers usability with big colorful tiles while hiding needed features.
The new design is obviously optimized for touchscreen use (where big targets are helpful), but Microsoft is also imposing this style on its traditional PC users because all of Windows 8 is permeated by the tablet sensibility.
How well does this work for real users performing real tasks? To find out, we invited 12 experienced PC users to test Windows 8 on both regular computers and Microsoft's new Surface RT tablets. "
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"About Jakob Nielsen
Jakob Nielsen has been called:"the king of usability" (Internet Magazine)
"the guru of Web page usability" (The New York Times)
"the next best thing to a true time machine" (USA Today)
"the smartest person on the Web" (ZDNet AnchorDesk)
"the world's leading expert on Web usability" (U.S. News & World Report)
one of the top 10 minds in small business (FORTUNE Small Business)
"the world's leading expert on user-friendly design" (Stuttgarter Zeitung, Germany)
"knows more about what makes Web sites work than anyone else on the planet" (Chicago Tribune)
"one of the world's foremost experts in Web usability" (Business Week)
"the Web's usability czar" (WebReference.com)
"the reigning guru of Web usability" (FORTUNE)
"eminent Web usability guru" (CNN)
"perhaps the best-known design and usability guru on the Internet" (Financial Times)
"the usability Pope" (Wirtschaftswoche Magazine, Germany)
"new-media pioneer" (Newsweek)
One of the "world's most influential designers" (Businessweek)Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., is a User Advocate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group which he co-founded with Dr. Donald A. Norman (former VP of research at Apple Computer). Before starting NNG in 1998 he was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer.
Dr. Nielsen founded the "discount usability engineering" movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and has invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation. He holds 79 United States patents, mainly on ways of making the Internet easier to use. "