Let that statement sink in for a minute – in Windows 10 Insider Preview builds, users have indicated they are:
"34 per cent more likely to be strongly satisfied with the filtered Taskbar"
… and based on that not-so-convincing statistic it’s been decided that the taskbar for a virtual desktop will only show apps running on that desktop (presumably hiding others that are running on other desktops at the time time?).
Gabe Aul at Microsoft describes in this post the latest features in the Windows 10 preview build and how feedback from preview build users is helping Microsoft decide what new features will make it into Windows 10, and which won’t.
And there you have it. Apparently the design of the Ribbon Bar in the latest Office versions was also designed the same way, based on observed/recorded usage patterns of ‘actual users’. If you think the Ribbon Bar is actually a good design then I won’t waste my time arguing with you, but most would probably agree from a usability point of view it’s a horribly cluttered, confused mess of somewhat related options. The Ribbon Bar reminds me of a set of cluttered drawers that are where you stuff your junk that you don’t have anywhere better to put. Each drawer has vaguely related things in it, but good luck trying to find something specific – you open a drawer and spend 10 minutes digging around in there trying to find what you’re looking for. Similarly for the Ribbon Bar – good luck finding that one specific feature.
So at some point if your’re lucky enough (?) to have Windows 10, you might wonder exactly how Microsoft arrived at a decision for why a certain feature is a certain way. And you can be assured that it was designed that way because 34% of preview build users (by a long way as far from a typical user as you can get) decided they were ‘most likely to be strongly satisfied’ if it was that way.