Let Word Do It
Following up to my last post on outlining, Marc Hedlund, one of the co-authors of Peer-to-Peer (O’Reilly), wrote about Word being too smart. Marc’s thesis is summed up in the last paragraph, where he says, “What the Word team lacks, in my view, is an awareness that, when a user is trying to get his or her own work done , the user is always smarter than the technology. Assuming that smart people aren't their market is the surest way to produce a bad word processor, which is exactly what I think they've done.”
There are really two parts to that thesis. The first is the opinion that Word has gotten too smart for its own good. I’ll talk about that in a bit, but I’d like to first address the factual notion that developing smart technology carries the inherent assumption that the users of that technology aren’t smart—that, in some way, we’ve tried to target Word toward some mythical “average” user who wants a lot of hand-holding.
The distinction I’d made, and the distinction Marc picked out, was the distinction between professional and non-professional writers. The problem, I think, is that Marc saw this in terms of “smart,” “dumb” and “average” users as opposed to just different kinds of users with just plain different needs. Ironically, Marc echoes this very point when he says, “While I think many of the ideas in Adam Engst's WriteRight proposal are fantastic, for the most part I have no need for them.” [emphasis added]
Making smart software isn’t about handholding allegedly stupid users. Frankly, that kind of thinking is just plain foreign to me. Aunt Tillie is a figment of Eric Raymond’s imagination, and there she should forever remain. I don’t make software for Aunt Tillie. I make software for real people who need to get real work done. These people want powerful tools, and I have no doubt that people like John McGhie would be more than happy to board a plane from Sydney to Seattle to hunt me down and thrash me to within inches of my life if we ever decided to “dumb-down” Word. Now, there are quite a few adjectives I could think of to describe folks like John McGhie, but “average” isn’t on the list.
Which brings me to the opinion that we’ve made Word too smart for its own good, and, while that’s an opinion that quite a few people share with Marc, it is, by no means, a universal opinion. Those of us who’ve spent a great deal of time reading the microsoft.public newsgroups and who’ve spent time talking to people like the MVPs and members of our Customer Council have come to see a pattern that has no correlation to a user’s intelligence or the extent to which she is technologically savvy. People who tend to curse Word have had significant prior experience with some other word processing and/or document producing software. People who don’t have that kind of prior experience tend to find Word’s power and features very helpful.
Now, Marc’s point had to do with intelligent default settings, and I’m sure that his retort would be that there must be some way to come up with default settings for Word’s automatic features that will satisfy some mythical “average” user. But there is a problem with that notion. I’ve read quite a few rants about Word, and a vast majority of the rants end with something like, “Why can’t Word be like [fill in the blank]?” The problem is that the filled-in blank spans the gamut from WordPerfect to nroff and vi.
In that context, it makes no sense, whatsoever, to think in terms of some mythical “average” user. What does make sense is to think in terms of the defaults that will satisfy most users. Removing the feature entirely isn’t a viable option (John, put that bat away!). For the remaining users, you try to find other ways to satisfy their needs, like the auto-recovery work we added to Word XP for Windows and Word 2004 on the Mac. No matter what we do, however, there is no way to satisfy everybody. There will always be people who curse Word, and, unfortunately, the people doing the cursing will always be louder than the people who are busy using Word to get their work done.
So, has Word become a “bad” word processor? Frankly, I have no clue, or, rather, I have no objective basis upon which to make a definitive statement one way or the other. “Good” and “bad” are value judgments that only individual users can make about a product with respect to their particular needs. Word is a powerful word processor, and, like any powerful tool, you can hurt yourself with it. This is neither “good” nor “bad”. It just is.
Rick
Comments
Anonymous
August 31, 2004
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August 31, 2004
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August 31, 2004
Marc,
I should start out by saying that if I thought Word was as good as we can make it, I'd have packed it in long ago and put Word into maintenance mode. There is still room for improvement on a number of fronts, which is why dialogs like this are very good to have.
Second, I absolutely agree with the idea that software should try to adapt to users rather than the other way around. In reality, however, that's way easier said than done. As you note, Clippy was one attempt to do just that, and it fell on its face.
More recently, as I mentioned in the post, we've added the auto-recovery features where Word provides an unobrusive notification for every automatic action it takes and gives the user an opportunity to undo that action--even after she's made a few other changes following the automatic action. The user can also turn off that particular automatic action entirely when undoing the action Word took. I don't know if it's an ideal solution to the problem, but it's an idea that has enough merit to at least try.
Lastly, I have to confess that I'm not sure what I think about the notion that Word's automatic actions reflect a perceived need regardless of the user's preferences. I see the point, but I do know that it doesn't accurately reflect our thinking about the issue. The conundrum we face is more a question of defaults, and, for these cases, the options are binary.
The question for each of these automatic actions is whether or not they default to on, thereby forcing people to turn them off when they don't want them, or leave them off, thereby forcing people to turn them on when they want them. The answer isn't always easy.
We have kicked around a number of ideas, including the notion of adding variable weights to the rules that fire in the inference engine for certain autoformatting features, but the added complexity, and significant cost to implement, has yet to be adequately justified by the actual benefit to users.
This is the really hard part of developing a piece of software, and there are no simple answers. I'm certainly welcome to ideas, though.
RickAnonymous
August 31, 2004
Adding variable weights to rules that trigger autoformatting features would make it more difficult than it is to learn how to get a particular desired result from Word, by obscuring some of the variables that lead to a certain autoformatted result.
At least when all the variables are out there for someone to see, they're more likely to find a workflow that doesn't lead to surprises. If Word is making a pseudorandom choice at the boundary between two ways to handle an autoformatting situation, it makes it that much more difficult to predict what a particular sequence of steps will do to one's document.
-- MarkAnonymous
August 31, 2004
I absolutely ADORE the auto-recovery feature. It has the benefit of letting me selectively set up rules for how Word interacts with the content I write, without ever having to see a preference pane. When I paste text in, I'm a click away from modifying how the text is pasted (is it plain text? styled? follow the "parent" format?). It is not entirely intuitive, but once I got used to it, I saw the light. Best of all, I can keep writing and not worry about it. If I'm not concerned with formatting (or if Word did the paste action correctly by default), I'm all set. If not, I can still finish my thought/paragraph and go back and rectify Word's "mistake." This ability makes it the very best kind of automated feature.
As an extension to that ability, I'd love to see the ability to change defaults by document or application-wide, as well as a one-stop shop to undo the defaults that I set or modify them if I wish. Needs change, and the software has to as well. As of now, there's a great deal of preference window digging to find what I want to find.
Lastly, I would appreciate a button to turn off all automated everythings, again, either by document or application-wide. If I wish to go back and turn on a select few features, I can do so, but at least I'd know I'm starting from ground zero.
If nothing else, I no longer compose text in BBEdit and then paste into Word for formatting. That's a plus.Anonymous
August 31, 2004
What about doing what Visual Studio does, and support the notion of user types? When I launch VS.NET 2003 for the first time it asks me whether I'm a C# user, a C++ user, someone who uses everything, or one of several other options. It then sets a bunch of things - like help filters, editor styles, and so on - to its best guess about my preferences. I can go back at any time and answer that same question differently.
All of that said - it has always seemed to me that we (Microsoft) do tend to try to build our products to please the lowest common denominator of user. We've got people - probably entire teams of them - agonizing over the "first time user" and adapting the interface accordingly, etc.
It's why in my opinion products like Linux have the popularity they have - you can tinker with them more easily. Example: My router is running a custom version of its software for example that allows me to specify that VOIP traffic gets priority, or that FTP has less priority than other traffic. You don't see that in our networking hardware, nor would you - we want "Aunt Tillie" to be able to plug it in and have it just work. I'm very sad to say that my router runs Linux and not our software. Not sad enough to boycott the router though - I like the features.
MarkAnonymous
August 31, 2004
Let the record show that John McGhie is a real person, and he really would carry through with that threat!Anonymous
August 31, 2004
The big problem with word is that it's too successful. Word's never going to please everyone; everyone's pressured to use Word. Whether for file-format compatibility reasons or by corporate decree too many people who would rather use something else, perhaps something more suited to their task, are forced into Word. As long as this goes on, there will be complaints: you'll never stop them all.
That said, a single, easy-to-discover "Stop helping me" button that turns off every single automatic feature that transforms text or formating would go a long way toward pleasing me and the rest of the "You made word too smart" crowd.Anonymous
August 31, 2004
BetalogueAnonymous
August 31, 2004
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August 31, 2004
My friend Ryan wrote something early in 2003 that resonates here (although he was talking about architectural software): "I don't want my objects to be very smart. That substitutes the tedium of doing the same thing over and over again for the tedium of debugging the relationships between smart objects that are being manic and overly helpful. [...] What I enjoy about design is being able to use common materials in uncommon ways. Maybe I want to use a garage door for a dining table. The software says that garage door objects must be in a wall. So this whole smart object concept simply gives up the heart of architecture."
Does it give up the heart of good writing too? Perhaps it does.Anonymous
August 31, 2004
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September 01, 2004
As a Word user I find myself agreeing with arguments on both sides of this issue. For me, the correction features are quite often offset by the incessant endency to change things I don't really want changed. The ability to turn off specific "features" is a real pain.
Word needs a "never help me like that" pulldown. Whenever Word uninvitedly changes something, we need a menu item that takes us immediately to a soft switch to permanently disable that feature. it's not enough to go through the manual and try to figure out which of the innumerable settings might be the culprit "this time". We need easy, intuitive disabling.Anonymous
September 01, 2004
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September 01, 2004
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September 01, 2004
I just want to say "yes" to the idea of user types. Being able to choose the closest profile to me from a set of user types and having an entire set of preferences be set automatically would be a great time-saver (and it would help lower the frustration level, too).Anonymous
September 01, 2004
Word is one of the worst pieces of software I know of. The tragedy is that many people only know about Word (I was one of them 10 years ago....). Another problem is that most users don't know how to properly use Word (and that's a design flaw of Word, IMNSHO). Finally, even when you use it right, Word does not work correctly.
I urge everybody to explore alternatives to Word: Mellel, LaTeX, FrameMaker, etc.... and DUMP microsoft office (use TextEdit or OpenOffice to open Word documents people send to you and complain to them that they are in a non-standard, non-documented, proprietary format).Anonymous
September 01, 2004
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September 01, 2004
Nothing aggravates me more in Word/Excel when they auto-correct things that I don't want auto-corrected. What's worse is that its not at all intuitive how to disable these features.
Excel is very bad at trying to turn everything into a link (URL, email addrs, etc), which then becomes un-edittable as text (or the how of this is strongly hidden). Sometimes text is just text.Anonymous
September 01, 2004
I also have to use Word because it has become a standard. It is full of stupid automation.
I would favor starting with NO automation and having a list of features that could be turned on when and if desired.
Seventeen years ago there was a wonderful small fast program "Write Now" that was very easy to use. Apple Works is also easy to use. "Word Perfect"is complex, but certainly a better and more predictable program than Word.
Word is a monopoly gone wrong!Anonymous
September 01, 2004
Word has got better with each version. But there still seems to be bugs that carry over from one version to the next. The most common issue I have is disappearing images. I paste in an image, maybe type a little text on that same page, and my image disappears! Change the view up or down a percentage usually causes the image to magically appear...but not always. Word's had this problem since Office 98. Am I the only one with this problem? Surely not.Anonymous
September 01, 2004
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September 01, 2004
Well, someone here has to admit that they love using Word. I use Word all day, almost every day. I especially appreciate some of the little hidden features in Word; they make it so much easier for me to get my work done, and to work in the way that I prefer to. (I jump around in a document a lot as I work on it.)
I've used Word to write, or help write, several books, and I found it wonderfully suited to doing this. (Though I always break up chapters into separate files to keep from having one humongous file.)
I don't have Word 2004 yet. I use Word v.X, and I'm pefectly happy with it. It's dead stable and I've never once had it crash on me.
I've helped a large number of users with Word. They all curse the automated features that are on by default. I think that I have identified the problem for these folks. It is actually very simple. You don't turn off auto-formatting and auto-correction features in Preferences. Users naturally go there, and even when they don't find the controls for these features there they don't even consider that they may be located elsewhere. When I tell them that they are easily turned off under the Tools menu, under AutoCorrect..., they complain that that isn't an intuitive place to find these settings. I think that they are right.
The same goes for dismissing the annoying Office Assistant. Once again folks look in Preferences to turn off the annoying animation. It isn't intuitive to expect to be able to click on the Assistant itself and then have an Options... button appear.
I suspect that if you put all of these controls in Preferences, most of the folks who complain that Word "takes away your control" would be appeased.
It also wouldn't hurt to have a simple setup assistant that one could run anytime to take you step by step through the automated features, telling you what they do, and asking you if you would like each individual feature on or off.
It's sad how many folks don't know how to use styles. A short introductory QuickTime movie showing folks how to use styles would be a great idea.
Finally, I'm not sure that folks who are coming to Word after being longtime WordPerfect/Mac users will ever be completely happy with Word. I sympathize that it is painful to have to unlearn the WP way of doing things and learn the Word way. But I also think that there is a resentment issue (for being forced to switch) that may never be overcome.
There used to be settings in Word to set up the program's menus and a couple of other features like Word 5.1. I'm sure that a similar feature for WP users could be implemented. But the time for such a feature to be included was several years ago. It may be too late now.Anonymous
September 01, 2004
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September 01, 2004
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September 08, 2004
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September 09, 2004
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September 13, 2004
I'll add my few comments here-I've used Word since version 3 and am one of those who really liked the 5.x versions ("Word Classic") since they didn't get in your way for writing and formatting (ie they weren't "helpful"). I'll take the reduction in features as it would make my job easier from a support perspective.
I do like Word as it lets me get the basics of something like a quick documentation sheet done in 20 minutes. However I think the ability to turn off all the automation, lock the styles, etc. would be a great boon. Also an ability to ignore aspects of formatting for imported/pasted text (keep bold/ital/underline, discard font & size) would solve myriad problems.
My problem is that regardless of the number of time I turn off the automation, something is turning them back on! Turn off the AutoFormat as I type settings only to discover several days later that somehow they are back on (and I know I didn't do this intentionally). Turn off Click & Type-back on again, somehow. I'm not mucking with the prefs-but I can't figure out who or what might be.
I understand the rise of the "Word Expert"-that's a role I fulfill as well and if I can't figure out why these things happen, how can that mythical "First Time User" figure it out?
Cheers,
JonAnonymous
September 13, 2004
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