Redesigning for idiots

Microsoft does it again. I have been happily unaware of the chevron hell for a long time, only read and heard about it before. But eventually I stumbled upon an application employing this hideous new "revolution" in UI design, and all I can ask myself is WHY?

Googling for a bit reveals that Microsoft invented context-sensitive chevrons because the users found menus to be too complicated. According to one of their surveys it took people too long to find the proper menu option in Microsoft's software, and chevrons was the way to cure that. Well, the big surprise is that every operating system uses menus in one way or another. Menus are convenient; they are categorized, and (if implemented properly) logical to use. If you want to change the font of the text, you go to the Format menu and click the appropriate item. If you want to save, load, print, or edit meta-data you go to the File menu. Want to insert a picture or an object? Just go to the Insert menu. There is nothing that's unlogical or complicated with that. It's part of the learning curve of a graphical operating system.

Microsoft's introduction of chevrons probably makes that learning curve much leaner, but it does that on the expense of the power users and effectively cripples the newbies (that will still have to learn how to use menus when confronted with them). There is a saying that explains this better than I could ever do:

"If you make a system that even an idiot can use, only the idiot will use it."

I suppose that's where Microsoft is going, trying to fluff up things á la Macintosh in order to create a family of operating systems that will only appeal to design-crazed morons that care more about how fancy things look than the actual usability.