Demonstrating unfinished aspects of the Microsoft Windows 8.1’s Windows Store experience

For this demo, I’m using a Dell Venue 8 inch tablet with an optional bluetooth keyboard.

I’ll present you with a few frustrating use cases that are very non-intuitive and in which regular users would absolutely get lost during the task at hand.

1. When updating apps, it’s very hard to discover how to select just a single app as Microsoft introduces yet another unnatural gesture for single selection of an item.

2. When installing an app, there’s no “OPEN” action available on the store.
When the user goes back to the Start screen, the app is nowhere to be found.
Once the user figures out how to see all the apps, the user will have to search for the app as there’s an overwhelming amount of icons with very small type to choose from.

It’s not as bad as it used to, but it still has some details that really need to be taken care of to not frustrate users and send them running for Android/MacOSX.

I hope someone at the Microsoft Windows UX Team is listening, and can see the frustration from a long life computer user’s perspective.

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