Haphazard UI in MSN Messenger

Published February 10th, 2006

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Sometimes I glance at design choices and really wonder, ‘what were they thinking?’ Various widgets in MSN Messenger are a prime example of this; the IM client is a product in a field where nobody cares to use conventional UI chrome, and there’s the identity crisis between being a desktop app and a web application. Look at this:

I guess it works, but can’t imagine what thought process would culminate in deciding that ‘Cancel’ should be a button and ‘Connect Now’ should be a link.

Dialog Box from Hell
The worst dialog box I've ever seen....

http://www.puleen.com Puleen Patel

I heard some rumours that they hired some Usability guru for their upcoming OS, wonder how that will change things, if at all.
http://canistorpedis.net/ thetorpedodog

I heard some rumours that they hired some Usability guru for their upcoming OS, wonder how that will change things, if at all.

It obviously hasn't changed anything in IE7's Fisher-Price cram-it-in-wherever UI yet.
http://firasd.org Firas

Well, I'm not saying that MS is bad with usability in general. The various teams (MSN, IE, Office, Shell etc.) are probably off doing their own thing most of the time—we're talking about a massive corporation after all, so it's unfair to generalize from one specific product to another.

My point was more like: the arrangement in the screenshot (link vs. button) definitely doesn't suck, but if some thought was put into it, what was the thinking? The result is fine, but was it produced by instinct, a constraint (eg. deadlines, component behaviour, etc.), or a specific choice? If it's the third, I'd be interested to know the reasoning, because nothing in my mental toolbox for designing UI would readily pick that distinction between a button for canceling the action and a link for hurrying it up.
Nathan

I believe the thinking behind it was rather simple, as the process is the countdown to reconnecting, its going to reconnect anyway so this feature is not important, whereas you may wish to cancel this process, as this isnt the automatic option they draw tis to your attention, as in most software and interactive design you tend to draw the attention to the feature that will create the most change; for example when leaving a software u are asked to save, as by default it wont save etc. To reconnect straight away is simply a hurrying feature, whereas the cancel button is the important function that the designeres wanted to draw your attention to. Although in my oppinion I would have had them both as buttons, clear on site what each of them do.

Firas Durri