Why Chris Pirillo is Wrong About "How Real People Will Use Windows 8"

A friend of mine sent me a link to to an article about this video and wondered what my thoughts on it were.

I'm not saying there isn't an issue here... but it's not a real world example at all. We're still at the beta stage, and there's no tutorial at all in the product. With as big of changes as Micrsoft is making, I'd expect there might just be a tutorial or so on the first set up. But even so, even if this is a real world experience, that doesn't mean it's a real world problem.

More than once, when showing somone an iPod touch or iPhone for the very first time, they don't have a clue how to exit an app. They have to be taught, and taught once. There's no tutorial for that. Someone shows you how... and I don't care what you say, it's not intuitive. I've seen babies know how to turn on an iPhone, how to swipe to unlock... those are intuitive. But that very first time (unless you've seen it before), a person has to be told to presss that random button in order to exit an app.

So how do you get back to Metro?

Press the Windows key.

It's that simple. If Chris had just told him what to do, like he would have in a real world situation, his dad would have learned it right away. His dad would have gotten back to the screen with all the boxes that, from what I could tell, he seemed pretty interested in. Normally, people would just say "hit the WWindows key." It's learned behavior, and you only have to learn it once.

Nevermind the fact of how obvious it will be on a table device... since the button will be right there next to the screen... just like an iPad or iPhone. And guess what? They'll probably still need to be told to press it to get back to Metro... the first time.