We can only hope it was English as a second language I suppose. If not where are MS finding these people.

R!

As for the pretty pictures...its ok the first time you see it but gets a bit busy the next time you go there and kind of distracts the eye from the search box (well, for me anyway).

The proposition
I agree it's obvious bing is a search engine. But why is it better than any other one? I would expect at least to see an 'About bing' link.

As it's in beta, I'd expect to see an explanation of its benefits and features. There is nothing like this. Recommendation 1: Add this.

One way users might have got to bing is when Microsoft hijacked the default search setting on IE6 and forced IE6 users to use bing, even if another search engine was set as the default (the issue lasted a week but is now fixed).

These users would have been left completely confused by the inability to find out what it was that they were looking at.

2 The line
Agreed, not knowing the line is there won't stop you using it. But what's the point of an invisible feature?

However, the problem of diagonal mouse movement collapsing the box and making a different one appear IS a usability problem and a well known one. Jacob Nielsen makes some interesting suggestions about how to handle this issue in his post on mega drop downs (see point 3 under 'Speed'). I suggest Microsoft implements them (<--recommendation 2).

3 bing or Bing
To be fair, my point here was actually about not using different styles for links and non links, and having something that looks like a universal topbar but isn't.

The fact they can't get the branding right is funny, but wasn't the main point. However, poor grammar / spelling are known to reduce users' trust in a site, so I'd recommend correcting this. It's not top of the list though.

4 Links above search box
The issue here, sorry if I didn't explain it well, is that there are 7 links with different and unexpected behaviours. This will confuse the user and reduce their confidence in clicking links.

This is what they do ...
Web - Web search on Bing
Images - Images search on Bing
Video - Video search on Bing
Shopping - Go to a completely different website (ciao.co.uk)
News - News search on Bing
Maps - Go to a completely different website (multimap.com)
More - Go to a list of 7 links. These are the 6 just shown plus xRank, rendering the More link pointless (as it could have just said xRank).

To me, it's poor usability to take people to different websites as a part of a page element that looks like a list of internal links.

My recommendation would be to integrate ciao/multimap functionality within the bing look and feel. Or to clearly distinguish between bing services (web, images etc) and links to other microsoft sites that can help you search other things.

Your other points are just insults and "just littered with hyperbole and are in no way structured for [me] to take seriously", so I won't respond to them ... Thanks for taking the time to comment though.

First off, you that these 12 reasons are "Usability Disasters." Given your 12 reasons they are hardley disaster and some of even questionable as genuine usabilty problems.

1. You don't know what Bing is for. Have you even considered the common scenarios for why a user would actually land on bing.com in the first place? Most likely they're going to the website because they've hard from word of mouth, a news article on the web, a friend, or have seen the add. Essentially, there's an ecosystem invovled that educates the user on what bing.com is. If it's a user whose used to the look and feel of live.com, the design looks exactly the same so it leverages the user's past experience. Are you suppose that the user just stumbles upon bing.com without any purpose.

2. What's that line that opens that little box. I agree with you hear about the points you make, however, I no way is this a usability disaster. With or without that line, the user is still able to accomplish his or her goal of finding information.

3. You don't know whether to call it Bing or bing. Again hardley a usability disaster. Quite frankly, does this actually matter to the majority of users who are using bing?

4.Let's return to the search box: what are those links about? I don't understand you're argument at all here. This design is taken directly from Google and other search. You claim that you are taken to entirely new page but I don't know what new page you are talking about. All search engines have a landing page that is different from the search results page, while these two pages are different in design they are consistent in look and feel.

I'm sorry but the reasons that you stated in this post are not disasters. While there are many things that can be improved with bing.com, I would hardley ever take your 12 reasons as credible reasons of how bing needs to be improved. None of your usability issues are centered around a user failing to accomplish a goal while using Bing. Instead your usability issues are just littered with hyperbole and are in no way structured for any design professional to take seriously.

If you decide to do any further evaluations, please center them on user goals, and show how the usability issues that you discover related to how your users failed at accomplishing their goal.

Lastly, usability professionals usually provide recommendations on how to improve the design. I see none of this in this post. Only hyperbole and brash criticism. ALthough criticism is needed, it's hard to take yours seriously at all.