Building "Windows 8": Task Manager

We are really excited to share some of the improvements we are making to the Task Manager in Windows 8. Task Manager is one of the most widely used apps, and it has a long history. It showed up in early versions of Windows as a simple utility to close and switch between programs, and has had functionality added to it through several releases to make it what it is today.
Because Task Manager is so widely used, we knew that any changes we made would be noticed, so of course we were both excited and cautious about the effort. At the beginning, there were a few key problems that we knew we wanted to address:

1. Build a tool that was well designed, thoughtful, and modern. After all, even a technical tool can benefit from a focus on design.
2. Fill some of the functionality gaps that drove some of our most technical customers to use other tools such as Resource Monitor and Process Explorer.
3. Organize and highlight the richness of data available to make it more elegant and clear for those who want access to a new level of data.
As you can see, we added quite a lot to the new Task Manager (and we only showed you the first tab!). Task Manager was a unique opportunity for user experience designers and researchers working together with technical program managers and engineers to create a clean, organized, and efficient design. We made it more streamlined for mainstream users, and more detailed for power users.