Why does the New menu even exist for creating new empty files?
&gt; User research shows that for many users, the way they create a new file is to find an existing file of the same type, copy it, then open the copy and delete everything in it.<p>&gt; For people with a document-centric view of the world, programs aren’t really things that you think about. What you really work on are documents.<p>Okay, but I don&#x27;t think people create new paper documents by photocopying an existing document and covering everything with correction fluid. The user interface of those physical document-authoring tools (typewriters, paper and pen, etc.) seem to make it quite clear how to start a new blank document.<p>The fact that people can&#x27;t discover any other way of creating a new document on their computer is obviously a legitimate problem, but I can&#x27;t see how the New menu is a particularly good solution because it doesn&#x27;t seem any more discoverable than the list of document-authoring programs in the Start menu.<p>I&#x27;m of course in agreement that user research is vital and that not everyone is aware of what you might consider the &quot;obvious&quot; or &quot;best&quot; way to create a document on a computer. I would like to see more details about how and why the New menu came to be (apparently) the primary solution to this UI problem.