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Windows 95's Start menu was invented by a chimpanzee-lab psychologist: 'Even a rocket scientist couldn't figure out Windows' (www.windowslatest.com)

submitted 1 month ago by woelkchen@lemmy.world to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

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Former Microsoft exec explain how a behavioral psychologist utilized Fitts's law to place the Windows 95 Start button in the bottom-left.

Paywall?

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[-] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 59 points 1 month ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law

Fitts's law (also known as Fitts' law) is a predictive model of human movement primarily used in human–computer interaction and ergonomics. The law predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the ratio between the distance to the target and the width of the target.[1] Fitts's law is used to model the act of pointing, either by physically touching an object with a hand or finger, or virtually, by pointing to an object on a computer monitor using a pointing device.

Corners have an infinite area and are the quickest to hit.

[-] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 27 points 1 month ago

Now, Win11 (by default) puts the start menu in a variable location, so it's both slower to interact with (more precision required) and prone to errors (misclicks).

I know from a technical standpoint, W95 was really, really shaky. But for me it was my first OS, and I think it still did a ton of stuff right.

Tada.wav

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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026

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