[IxDA Discuss] Critiquing the Office 2007 (was Re: Microsoft to license Office 2007 UI system)

[Wilson, Russell]

Dave,

Can you share any links to the published detail on the
research they conducted?

Fwiw, and maybe because I haven't moved through the learning
curve yet, I hate the ribbon... (but appreciate the other 
improvements)

Thanks,
Russ

 

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of
David Malouf
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 11:48 AM
To: discuss at ixda.org
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Critiquing the Office 2007 (was Re: Microsoft to
license Office 2007 UI system)


Todd Zaki Warfel wrote:

> Whereas web-based apps are starting to look and perform more and more 
> like desktop applications, this is going the other direction - a 
> desktop app looking like and operating like a web-app. It's just 
> another case of MS throwing everything including the Kitchen sink at 
> the display.
>
> Just because you have more pixels doesn't mean you should use them.
>
> When will they learn?
>

Todd, I find the above critique to be very surface.

There is a lot of published detail that is quite convincing about how
they came to this design and what problems they are hoping to solve from
earlier Office designs.

Also, I don't find this very "webby" at all except to say that "webby"
means conventionless and this being a new convention without a lot of
precident would confirm that.

Lastly, the ribbon is only a small part of the changes they've done to
office and to look at the Ribbon as the only major change to me feels
also very surface as a critique.

My own take after using Office 2007 almost exclusively for a few months
now is that while the beta was buggy the premises were very very sound.

1. See before you do is REALLY helpful.
2. The tabs and associated ribbon as a way of presenting things in a
more discoverable fashion does work over time. It has a learning curve,
but that curve definitely pays off.
3. text formatting widgets as overlay within the text editing space is
GREAT! No longer having to go "all the way" back to the top for the
toolbar to do things like bullets and alignment and other primary
formatting changes is brilliant.

And this is just the beginning.

Things that I miss from the Mac Office 2004 version is the right panel
palettes akin to Adobe software. Since our screens are wider than they
are high and since Word and PPT docs seem to be vertically focused,
using this right space seemed to work better than the ribbon. But since
Excel is more horizontal than vertical and PPT can be horizontal in
nature I can see that if I had to choose a vertical or a horizontal
approach I may go with the horizontal one. Also, if I want to have
multiple word docs open (something very common) the extra horizontal
space in the vertical approach goes away and it would be better to use
the height.

Over all, licensing aside, I really like the new version of Office. It
is a bold move for a company that has been locked with its legacy for
way too long in the Windows space. They did 1000's of hours of research
for this project, and I wouldn't want to be so quip with snubbing it out
of hand.

-- dave


--
--
David Malouf
dave at ixda.org
http://ixda.org/

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