Windows 8 toast notifications appeared in the upper right corner of the screen, and you dismissed them by flicking them to the right.
During the design explorations for how toasts should behave, a senior executive lobbied for the ability to pull the toast to the left.
What happens when you pull the toast to the left?
Well, nothing yet.
But the deal is that the toast is on an invisible rubber band, and when you let go, the toast goes zoom off to the right.
So now, instead of just flinging the toast off the screen, you can shoot it off the screen!
I don’t know how long it took the design team to talk the senior executive down from this idea. For all I know, the visualization above is the closest it ever came to reality.
Maybe they were able to convince the senior executive by pointing out that if you add this behavior for dragging to the left, then you won’t be able to add swipe-left features in the future. The swipe-left gesture got wasted on this stupid animation.
Or because the overall design aesthetic for Windows 8 was to reject physics and skeumorphism and embrace the digital nature of computers.
Or because it made Windows 8 look like the misbehaving student shooting rubber bands at the teacher.
Whatever the reason, the result is that you can’t shoot Windows 8 notifications across the screen. Not that you ever asked for that.
Read more: A rejected attempt to inject pseudo-physics into Windows 8 toast notifications