Microsoft’s homepage underwent serious changes recently (December 14^th). And these changes are good!

In short: simple design and good architecture makes all the difference.

I am generally very pleased when I come across good usability design. And saying that Microsoft has good usability design seems silly and unnatural. But it is true – at least as far as their website is concerned.

So, I stumbled across their site last week while I was looking for a security update. At first sight, I noticed the site looked different – and immediately, I thought to myself… “Crap, now I will never be able to find what I am looking for!” Two seconds later, I was where I needed to be and I was delighted, to say the least.

Below, I am surfacing 5 reasons why I like the new design.

1. Where are we? The designers have made that much abundantly clear. The Microsoft mark is given plenty to space to breathe. Additionally, there is high contrast between the mark and the background color – all rolling up into a cool, relaxed, and clear presentation of the mark.
2. Happy humans help. Again, the idea of relaxed and cool is reinforced by their choice of photography – which makes their offer easier to swallow. They are putting a high emphasis on Vista, Zune, Xbox, and Windows Marketplace.
3. Portal with a preview? Click on the “Download and Trials” link. You will notice that the page grows opaque, the links get disabled, and a new window (layer/div) opens over the main content area. This new window contains a list and preview screenshots of the different destinations categorized under that parent link. We have seen screen previews before (ask.com) and we like them… Microsoft implemented three views for the list: icons and list, larger icons and just a list – much the way Windows Explorer works. I am not sure about bringing that metaphor to the web. I think there might be a better way to handle this.
4. News. Black band with white text. Super contrast and subtle way to sneak in content. The black bar is also used as a visual divider to separate promotions from content. Nicely done.
5. Preloaded vertical tabs. These bad boys are becoming more and more popular. I designed something like this over a year ago for a client of ours and it took a lot of convincing before it was accepted. I bet convincing people that vertical tabs are a good thing now after Google and Microsoft’s successful implementation wouldn’t be that difficult to do. Microsoft has about 80 links tucked away behind these tabs, but only 10-18 links are displayed at any given time. The categorization is quite nice and useful. The vertical tabs follow a hybrid information architecture model of audience and task - which I think works rather well here. I’d be willing to bet designing this IA is where they spent the bulk of their time.

All in all, I am very pleased and surprised by all this great work.

Here are a couple of Q&A’s about their new home page.

Labels: Design