MICROSOFT_PRESS_EBOOK_INTRODUCING_WINDOWS_10

CHAPTER 2
The Windows 10 user experience
How you react to Microsoft Windows 10 depends to a great extent on what your Windows desktop
has looked like for the past few years.
If you and your organization stuck with Windows 7 (especially if you completed a migration from
Windows XP shortly before its end-of-support date in 2014), you’ll have to adjust to a few new ways of
working. The redesigned Start menu is the most obvious change, followed closely by the relocation of
many system settings from Control Panel to the modern Settings app.
Ironically, the learning curve is considerably more complex if you and your users were early adopters
of Windows 8. Not only will you have to learn the new elements of Windows 10, but you’ll have to
unlearn some techniques you mastered with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.
Feedback to Microsoft after the release of Windows 8 made it clear that the radically revised user
experience caused significant frustration. Even with the refinements introduced in Windows 8.1, the
change in user experience was substantial for anyone accustomed to the familiar desktop and Start
menu.
As a result, the Windows 10 user experience offers another significant round of changes, designed
to bring together the best elements of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 and smooth the transition between
the familiar desktop ways and the new touch-friendly techniques.
In Windows 10, you and your users can take advantage of rich, new Windows apps on a traditional
desktop PC or laptop, alongside familiar Windows desktop applications, interacting with those new
apps in resizable windows. On a touch-enabled mobile device, you can turn on Tablet Mode, making it
possible to work with apps in a full-screen setting, minus clutter and distraction.
A new set of navigation techniques replace the sometimes-confusing “hot corner” techniques from
Windows 8, and the addition of virtual desktops in Windows 10 makes it possible to shift between
groups of apps instead of shuffling windows around.
Regardless of your starting point, moving to Windows 10 requires a thoughtful and thorough plan
for training and orienting new users, especially if they work primarily in a traditional desktop environment.
This chapter describes what you need to know about the changes in the Windows 10 user experience
so that you can make those plans intelligently.
19