Former Microsoft exec explain how a behavioral psychologist utilized Fitts’s law to place the Windows 95 Start button in the bottom-left.
Former Microsoft exec explain how a behavioral psychologist utilized Fitts’s law to place the Windows 95 Start button in the bottom-left.
I wouldn’t be so sure. Fitts’s law is well-known and could easily have been in the right state for this story to be true at the time. I remember learning specifically about how it applies to the corners of ths screen in a Human-Computer Interaction class once.
Fitt’s law being true or well known, and explaining why it works doesn’t mean they hired a behavioral psychologist.
This is like saying an architect hired physicist to explain why arches work; when everyone already knows that they work.
With the other UIs, like Mac’s next step and dock; they saw the same basic concept and had the ability to see real world feedback from that, no behavioral psychologist needed.