March 1995. Although PCs had been around for many years at this point, less than 40% of households in the US owned one. Back then, people mostly associated PCs with being a machine used at work, not a thing you’d even need at home. They were complicated and… unfriendly.
Just a few months before the launch of the all-new Windows 95, Microsoft Bob was an attempt to create a user-friendly interface that runs on top of Windows to increase the popularity of PCs at home and show how valuable a PC might be for purposes other than business.
This interface provides a virtual home inside your computer, divided into multiple rooms resembling your house’s rooms. It’s designed to be intuitive and user-friendly, so you don’t need to know what a word processor is or how the applications are named — for example, just click on the pen and paper on your virtual desk and start writing a letter.
