Let's MIX it up!
Just a short note to let you know that I'll be presenting a new session during MIX in Las Vegas on Friday, March 7 at 10:00 entitled "The Story of the Ribbon."
In this session, I'm going to present the story of the Ribbon--the customer problems that we were aiming to solve by designing a new user interface for Office, the prototypes we considered (but abandoned), the mistakes we learned from along the way, and the principles we used to create the Office 2007 user interface.
It will be informal narrative, with lots of pictures and screenshots--my perspective as a member of the team who worked on the user interface from day one until the day we shipped. My goal is to keep it light and fun, but hopefully also to share many of the lessons we learned along the way.
The session is part of MIX UX, a three-day user experience track which is new to MIX08.
I'm also going to be participating in a panel discussion on Wednesday, March 5 at 3:00 called "What's the Secret Formula?" This discussion will be focused on how to overcome the challenges seemingly inherent in creating software with a great user experience. I'll be sharing the panel with participants from Mozilla, Adaptive Path, and elsewhere at Microsoft. It should be fun.
If you're at MIX, I'd love to chat, so please feel free to come by and introduce yourself. I hope to meet some of you in person either at my sessions or elsewhere at MIX!
More information about all the great MIX content is on the MIX08 web site.
Comments
Anonymous
February 20, 2008
PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2008/02/21/Anonymous
February 20, 2008
He lives! ;) I look forward to hearing the reports!Anonymous
February 21, 2008
Somebody should also write an article about the customer problems you introduced with the new UI ;)Anonymous
February 21, 2008
Someone should also make sure robin never posts again... ;)Anonymous
February 21, 2008
Good to know you are really "Not Gone." I miss your informative and insightful posts. Sorry I will not be in Vegas.Anonymous
February 23, 2008
Will the presentation be downloadable? It would also be great if someone could film and publish it, I am very interested in the stuff you want to share with us.Anonymous
February 24, 2008
I agree with Robin's response. I wonder if MS will ever release any data than indicates how many existing Office users didn't like the ridiculous "Ribbon". I've been using Office apps for a long time now and the new UI is the main reason I'm now evaluating other (non-MS) options.Anonymous
February 24, 2008
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=249630&messageID=2431732Anonymous
February 24, 2008
Yes, actually the MS-known but non-disclosed bugs, compatibility issues and removed features seem even more annoying to me than the ribbon. It's no good idea to start on the next release before the current release does things right.Anonymous
February 26, 2008
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February 27, 2008
Dean: you could make the same argument about most kinds of change. Complaints outnumber praise simply because people are more vociferous in complaining than they are in praising. Sure, Google may list 10,000 pages decrying the new interface, but are the authors of those pages truly representative of the entire userbase? Just because a group is vocal does not mean it's the only one out there. There often are large, silent majorities that, if asked, would voice a different opinion.Anonymous
February 28, 2008
Francis, read my earlier post. I'd like to know the actual numbers myself. BTW, I notice my post from yesterday, re the 3 criteria Jensen himself had stated for the UI design, hasn't appeared here yet. From my perspective, none of those three were fulfilled by that ridiculous "Ribbon", esp. the third one. I wonder if the posts here are being censored!Anonymous
March 01, 2008
Gemini and robin, Most people that I have came across hate the ribbon because they hate change. After using the ribbon for a while I find features much quicker then I did in prior versions of Office and I am definetly not a beggining user. I do however think they need to modify the ribbon but it is the first version. Also, Robin please tell us what features they removed? I don't know of any.Anonymous
March 01, 2008
Daniel, I dislike the Ribbon because it affected my productivity adversely. It takes more clicks to get things done than with the classic UI. Per Jensen Harris, that one of the criteria for success, i.e. get things done with the same or less effort. I welcome change when it improves matters, which the Ribbon decidedly hasn't done. Why would I want to invest resources in learning the new UI when it offers absolutely zero benefits (to me) over the classic UI? If MS provides users with an alternative, classic UI and THEN measures how many users are using the Ribbon UI, that'll indicate how well the Ribbon UI has been received. As of now, many users don't have a choice and have the new UI basically shoved down their throats. As a result, it's very easy for MS to claim "success".Anonymous
March 01, 2008
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March 01, 2008
Sorry, wrong link above. "Differences in the 2007 Office system" is currently at: http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/6cba202b-d60d-4f27-a74a-743c9bd955001033.mspxAnonymous
March 02, 2008
Anytime you make a substantial change that affects a large number of people, some people are going to like the change, and some won't. In the case of Office, we have over 450 million customers. So, even in a hypothetical case where 99% of people like something, that's still nearly 5 million people who don't. And as we all know, people tend to be most vocal when they have a negative opinion (especially online.) :) That said, overall the new UI has been a success (and not just theoretically, given the fast market adoption of the product.) In the most recent independent research that was done of people who have had Office 2007 for at least 3 months, 84% reported that the UI makes them "more productive" and 82% reported that they found it "easier to use" (vs. Office 2003.) Overall satisfaction for the UI change across the board is in the mid-80's--honestly higher than I would have guessed possible given the magnitude of the change. Negatives are in the mid-single digits. At the same time, I certainly appreciate that people will always have valid, differing viewpoints about what works well and what doesn't in software. We continually monitor feedback about the Office UI so that we can continue improve it in future versions. On Robin's detailed feedback: The features cited were removed because of astronomically low usage or compatibility issues. Insert Picture from Scanner was removed because it didn't work with virtually any modern scanner or OS. Copy and Paste as Picture are still there--on the Paste dropdown on the Clipboard group. Send for Review was taken out of the default UI because it didn't work dependably on most infrastructures, and had extremely low usage. In the case of Picture Tools, when you insert a picture, the contextual tabs are automatically activated--no extra click is necessary. When you want to use the tools again, you can double-click the picture to bring forward the tools, just like in Office 2003.Anonymous
March 02, 2008
Jensen, I do agree that when substantial changes are made, some will like it and some won't. However, I refer you to the three criteria for success you mentioned at the BayCHI presentation on 12-13-2005. Based on my personal experience, none of those three hold with the Ribbon, esp. the third one, as it takes more key/mouse clicks to perform the same tasks. Ergo, the new UI is decidedly less efficient. Other other sites, such as TechRepublic, there have been plenty of users with less-than-positive opinions about the Ribbon. The posts from sysadmins are particularly interesting. One stated that after evaluating both Office 2007 and OpenOffice, the company decided to abandon Windows Vista & Office 2007 and move to Linux & OpenOffice. I'm personally evaluating other alternatives, such as OpenOffice & Zoho. Whereas their UIs are different, they're a sight more logical than the Ribbon (IMHO, of course). To me, investing the time & effort to learn the Ribbon UI, merely so I can continue with my daily tasks, is a very low ROI proposition. BTW, I've been using Office apps for more years than I care to remember. I've never had any issues with the changes (UI or otherwise), until this one. It'll be interesting to see the composition of the user base used for the survey you mentioned. How many of those were "captive" users, those who have to use it at work and don't have another choice? A more accurate measure, IMHO, would have been to provide users with a choice between the Ribbon and the classic UI and see how many choose the Ribbon of their own free volition.Anonymous
March 02, 2008
@jensenh: Ok, you've cleared out some of the points out for me now. Thank you for that. Nevertheless Office 2007 needs improvements to keep up with previous versions in some areas. To put "Copy as picture" to the Paste dropdown seems strange to me but not harder than Shift-Edit/Copy. The graphics tools appeared in previous Word versions with a single click AFAIK. In Word 2007 single click to get the context tools works for tables but not for pictures. This is an inconsistent experience for users. To remove features from Office because of compatibility issues seems a bad idea to me. Anyway getting a picture from scanner is still available but deep buried in Office in the clipart organizer. I'm sure it will have the same compatibility issues there. However removing features because they caused trouble with some small percentage of hardware or OSes is not the way to go. Furthermore removing features in general is no good idea. Companies might rely in their workflow on them maybe for things that are important but get havily used ony once a year. And if I tell some users to do something in a certain way I actually want to rely on that the feature is still there in the next Office versions and I must not invent the wheel and figure out for them how to do things then. In other words: IMHO there's not too much great improvement in Office 2007 Standard over previous versions. So why should companies buy it when even useful features got removed? Send for review worked for infrastructures using Outlook just fine. So I wonder which are the "most infrastructures" where it didn't work. I also doubt MS got much real data from companies in their usage statistics. Big companies where you would also expect power users of Office will definitely stop sending Office products statistics data out via their company firewall and/or GPO. And just because a feature is only needed by power users which are a small percentage you should not remove it either! Or does MS not have the power users in focus any more - only the big mass? Most urgent issue however is anything which is buggy or inconsistent regarding compatibility to previous Office versions. And PUBLIC DOCUMENTATION of known issues. I also put a dozen issues to MS support a long time aga which are still NOT in the MS KB. I'm sure compatibility/interoperability during roll-out is one of the main reasons why companies do not upgrade to Office 2007. So if you did not already please have a deep look at the compatibility issues described in the slide show. Here's the link again: http://www.slideshare.net/funnybroad/office2007-basic-compatibility-issues/ Any compatibilty/interoperability issues should definitely get fixed in Office 2007 and not in the upcoming releases.Anonymous
March 03, 2008
Jensen, I appreciate the issues you faces, having been a software consultant for quite while now. That's involved some rather unusual UI work as well. I've used Office products for many years now. I've been using the trial version of Office 2007. I use Excel very heavily. It's been crashing with no provocation at random. The Ribbon has been very counter-productive, to say the least. I also found it quite non-intuitive. On 12/13/2005, you mentioned three criteria for the new UI at the BayCHI presentation. From my perspective, none of those three criteria are fulfilled by the Ribbon, esp. the third one, as it takes more mouse/key clicks to perform the same tasks. To me, it appears learning a new UI in order to continue doing the same work as before, is a low ROI proposition. What would my incentive to invest $$$s in buying the new Office suite and then investing the time & effort to learn the new UI? BTW, it will be surely interesting to see what kind of users contributed to the poll. From the responses I've seen, experienced Office users have had a much harder time adapting to the new UI. Based on posts on the TechRepublic site, the overall projected costs (purchase as well as training) have prompted some to move away from MS Office suite entirely. If MS were to provide the classic UI as well, despite the fact some functionality may not be exposed, and allow users to choose which UI they want, that will provide the real test. Right now, some users don't have choice but to learn the new UI, eg. in situations where the employer has chosen to upgrade to Office 2007.Anonymous
March 03, 2008
Jensen,
- Will your MIX presentation be available live or as an 'on demand' one afterwards?
- Someone mentioned that you've moved on from leading the effort on the Office ribbon. If so, what have you moved into now for work effort and what does it mean to the Ribbon in Office? (i.e. MS Office has a history of one or two version 'new cool things' or product introductions that just as you get to the point of using them widely are suddenly gone or 'no longer being worked on'.
- Anonymous
March 04, 2008
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March 09, 2008
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March 11, 2008
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March 11, 2008
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March 15, 2008
Hi, Also would appreciate a link to the independent survey you mentioned. I am also interested in knowing, if that is on-topic here, and you are allowed to answer such questions, what percentage of he 450 million people you mentioned are using which versions of Office. Any publicly available statistics on Office users would be of interest to me. thanks, Bill