The old saw says that "a horse is a camel designed by committee". When I first saw the default background that comes with Windows 7, I had to agree with Peter Bright – it is simply god-awful. The first thing I did with the three new installations of Windows 7 in our household was to banish the default background to the great bit-bucket in the sky.
I wondered how on earth something so bad could have actually ended up being shipped by Microsoft. Here’s the answer. A video of Denise Trabona, who is a Senior UX (User Experience) Lead on the Windows Design and Research Team, talking about the process that ultimately led up to the choice of the default background.
The pragmatic Dutch have a very good word to describe this process: mierenneuken. Literally, ant-fucking. The sort of nit-picking that loses sight of the wood for the trees, the inability to recognise that despite all the huffing and puffing over miniscule choices, what you have ended up with is simply not very good at all.
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