What My People Says About the Windows 10 UI (Premium)

This week, Microsoft finally provided its first public peek at My People, a new Windows 10 feature that will debut in the "Redstone 3" update that is now expected in September. Does this feature even make any sense?

I first wrote extensively about My People back in November, in Creators Update Marks a Welcome Return to the People-Centric Focus of Windows Phone. At the time, Microsoft intended to ship this feature in the Creators Update, but it later delayed the release to "Redstone 3."

"We are placing people at the center of Windows," Microsoft Principal Program Manager Lead Allison O'Mahony said at that October event, explaining the complexity of the patchwork of applications and services we use each day to connect with others. "[But] most of our communications happen with a few key people. These are the people who matter most in our day-to-day lives."

Putting those people front and center makes some sense, though of course non-Microsoft platforms don't offer much in the way of people-centric UIs. For example, on iPhone or Android, you pretty much work with apps. Do you want to call someone? Use the phone app. Text message? Messages. And so on.

I've always liked Microsoft's friendlier approach, but with Windows 10 relegated to PCs and a few niche devices, that's sort of beside the point unless you adopt solutions like Microsoft's Arrow Launcher for Android, which, by the way, does offer a people-centric interface. Samsung's Edge interface on newer Galaxies also lets you put people, if not front and center, then at least just a swipe away.

But a lot of us, several hundred millions of us, still interact with the world via traditional PCs every single day. So it's understandable that Microsoft would bring its people-centric user experiences to its flagship PC platform too. The theory here is that you can think about a person first, and not an app, and then choose from available communication choices. For example, you might want to tell your spouse something, so selecting them---via some icon-based representation---and then going from there makes sense. It could be logical and efficient. In theory, anyway.

As first demonstrated in October, the interface that Microsoft has come up with is called My People. It's accessed via a new button in the Windows 10 taskbar, and you can pin your favorite contacts---or at least "the people who matter most in our day-to-day lives"---to the taskbar as well.

We've waited a long time to try My People, but as you may have seen, Windows 10 Insider Preview build 16184 is the first to let testers try it out. (That said, Rafael previously provided the first-ever look at this feature, as well as a neat follow-up in which he actually got the hidden work working prior to Microsoft's official unveiling.)

In use, My People has a few rough edges. It's not as refined or attractive as the October demo: The people cards that pop-up when you click taskbar-based people icons are just normal rectangles ...

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