A former Microsoft employee criticizes the Windows 11 Start menu

The diversification of the business model of microsoft It has led him to make a series of decisions that have consisted, among other things, in the introduction of advertising in versions 10 and 11 of Windows. That has brought with it various changes in the design and behavior of the iconic Start menu that many have not liked, including some former employees of the Redmond giant.

Jensen Harris, a former Microsoft employee who worked as a designer for Microsoft Office, has criticized in a twitter thread the Windows 11 Start menu. For starters, he has mentioned that he was prompted to download Microsoft Edge when he searched for Chrome, Google’s web browser.

Regarding what is shown as a whole by the Start menu after performing the Chrome search, Harris has commented that the behavior seems confusing, since the left part has apparently been made by a designer, although there are things that seem to him questionable, but the right part directly reminded you of your “Internet Explorer toolbars in 2008”in a clear allusion to that time when many users had Internet Explorer and/or Firefox full of toolbars and search bars, the vast majority of which were of dubious use.

Jensen Harris has also criticized other aspects such as the advertising on bing wallpaper, which has reminded him of the banners one could find in the era of Yahoo’s GeoCities service, during the early years of the web. And not only that, but he has added that said announcement has given you the feeling that your computer was “infected by a virus”that “the text is misaligned and is on a Windows Vista-era background” and that the top left corner is rounded and the right is not.

The former Microsoft employee seems to have been pleased, because he has apparently been picky about pointing out things in the Windows 11 Start menu that are wrong in terms of design. Other points Harris mentions are that “a great user interface should help people accomplish a task with minimal friction” and other inconsistencies with the use of rounded corners.

The culmination of all his criticism is in the first tweet, with which Harris says that “the Start menu is Microsoft’s flagship user experience. It should represent the best user interface design the company is capable of.”

This is not the first time that a former Microsoft employee has criticized the company’s direction around Windows. Jerry Berg, another who worked for the Redmond giant, exposed three years ago the possible reasons why the updates in Windows 10 would be causing so many problems, and the truth is that his explanation was quite plausible and according to what not a few users they got to experience.

We’ll see how Microsoft fares with the future Start menu that will presumably be introduced in Windows 11 22H2.