Bill Gates’ 2003 e-mail detailing usability nightmare

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently published an e-mail from Bill Gates to several Microsoft employees about his experience trying to download Windows Movie Maker for Windows XP. It’s scathing in the level of detail Gates goes in to, number of steps he had to perform, and the fact that he never got it working. Bill Gates didn’t get it working. He created Windows.

Now THAT is user testing!

Best Bill Gates quote from his e-mail: “So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package. I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself. I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.”

Best quote of the replies in response to Bill’s e-mail: “Guess we should start working on a list of things that need to be fixed withe web sites. W1J, and with windows, and identify owners. Bill’s frustration is not unreasonable.”

Note: This e-mail is from 2003, but I’m sure much of the content is still relevant today.

Link to article
Link to the original chain of e-mails (PDF)