Monday, January 23, 2006
The End of Personalized Menus
Hooray! The terrible idea of personalized menus is dead. Whenever I find personalized menus, I immediately turn it off.
The idea is flawed from the get go. Personalized menus are supposed to display frequently used functions and hide infrequent functions. The problem I have is the hiding of the infrequent functions. In order for something to be promoted to frequently accessed, you have to know it exists. How do you know it exists if it's being hidden?
Discovering an application's abilities is like an Easter egg hunt. Even after you performed your initial scan of what's available, which is an inconvenient process in itself, you are liable to forget your discoveries. The functions remain hidden. Out of sight; out of mind.
I am happy they are gone, but surprised it too this long for Microsoft to discover they don't work. Maybe the notion was hidden in a personalized menu.
The idea is flawed from the get go. Personalized menus are supposed to display frequently used functions and hide infrequent functions. The problem I have is the hiding of the infrequent functions. In order for something to be promoted to frequently accessed, you have to know it exists. How do you know it exists if it's being hidden?
Discovering an application's abilities is like an Easter egg hunt. Even after you performed your initial scan of what's available, which is an inconvenient process in itself, you are liable to forget your discoveries. The functions remain hidden. Out of sight; out of mind.
I am happy they are gone, but surprised it too this long for Microsoft to discover they don't work. Maybe the notion was hidden in a personalized menu.
# posted by Kyle A. Miller @ 12:57 PM 
