[IxDA Discuss] Microsoft's Ribbon?

Mon Sep 24 01:12:30 PDT 2007

Chris,
There are a few things I would have done differently designing and
implementing the ribbon:

1. Give experienced users options to customize the ribbon - now it is
static, so many people hate it. The only place that personalization is
allowed is the Quick Access toolbar, which has limited space.

2. Preserve compatibility with previous personalizations - for example, my
menus containing styles that I used in previous versions (in fact, since
Office 95) do not work in Word 2007.

3. Allow users to control the degree of smartness offered by the application
- for example, when I use numbered lists and indent a line to make it a
sub-list, I do not want Word to decide instead of me that I want to indent
the entire list.

4. Base the interface and interaction on different task flows. Maybe most
people first write, then format, then insert pictures, then add references.
I am sure there are many who don't do it that way - myself included.

5. Never count on people getting used to it and thus gradually getting to
like it more. As a person masters a skill, that person inevitably finds ways
to streamline his or her work. No one can streamline the ribbon - see point
1.

Here is my extended opinion in Bulgarian
http://www.e-lesno.com/blog/office2007_kordela/ 

Dimiter

Dimiter Simov
Lucrat Ltd. www.lucrat.net
Netage Solutions Inc. www.netagesolutions.com
Usability blog www.e-lesno.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of Chris
Bernard
Sent: Tue, Sep 18, 2007 17:47
To: Jeff Stevenson; Lisa deBettencourt
Cc: IxDA Discuss
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Microsoft's Ribbon?

I did a talk on all this stuff back in January that folks can watch here:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/f/f/1fff960f-51a2-44b1-b033-bf25a3c
7c7ab/BRE001.wmv

Those of you familiar with Jensen's blog will find much of the content
familiar. I've provided some context on Office below for folks that are
interested.

It will tell you exactly how a company with 'unlimited' resources and money
goes about redesigning an interface. And of course statements like this are
silly as NO company, not even Microsoft can approach projects from this
perspective. But it will give you insights into the design decisions a
company makes, and how they can make them, when it's a product that involves
hundreds of millions of users (350 million to 500 million depending on who
is counting).

I'll summarize by saying the Office 2007 is far from perfect (The Orb and
it's hidden goodness perhaps being its signature failing). But all in all
when you look at the customer scenarios that Office has to fulfill I would
call our redesign a stunning success. It makes it far easier for existing
users to create more polished documents quickly and it's a much easier
interface for new users to pick up (and our benchmark and longitudnal
testing bear this out anecdotes aside). In fact I'd be hard pressed to name
one single example of where a company is taking a bigger chance on user
experience than with Office. SAP is trying and we'll start seeing the fruits
of their labor soon and I would submit that going from OS9 to OSX was a huge
change for many. We must all still know a few of those holdouts banging
things out in Quark on OS9. :)

The problem with Office 2007 is the same problem a lot of big applications
and productivity suites have, be they Adobe Creative Suite, PeopleSoft, SAP,
Sharepoint, etc. in that they are designed to do everything well and often
do most of it poorly or require a very advanced learning curve (Imagine
sitting down in front of Photoshop or InDesign for the first time. These are
complex applications but I've been using them for 18 years so I don't even
notice anymore).

The Ribbon got Office steered in the right direction but it is of course a
journey. But it's also an opportunity and it's why we see the success of
niche products like Basecamp or even Apple's collection of Pages, Keynote
and Numbers that are fantastically useful for many folks.

I'd be curious to hear from folks that want to learn more about Office.
Watch my talk and tell me what you would have done differently from a design
process. Share it here.

Chris Bernard
Microsoft
User Experience Evangelist
chris.bernard at microsoft.com
630.530.4208 Office
312.925.4095 Mobile

Blog: www.designthinkingdigest.com
Design: www.microsoft.com/design
Tools: www.microsoft.com/expression
Community: http://www.visitmix.com

"The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed." William
Gibson

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of Jeff
Stevenson
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 8:58 AM
To: Lisa deBettencourt
Cc: IxDA Discuss
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Microsoft's Ribbon?

I can attest to at least one instance of what Will described. I used to work
for a small software company that is all but married to Microsoft, and they
decided to redesign their software with a Ribbon interface. This was not,
unfortunately, a decision born out of their desire for a better UI, but a
decision born out of a desire to be like Microsoft.

The fortunate result was that I got to spend a lot of time reading Jenson
Harrison's blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/default.aspx) and reverse
engineering the usability principles behind the ribbon. In theory, I think
the ribbon is a very clever and well thought out interface. But in reality,
convention trumps clever ideas. So I'm certain that most long-time Office
users are more frustrated with the changes than they are pleased with the
new innovations.

It would be very interesting to do some usability comparisons of Office 2007
and Office 2003 on brand new Office users (if any exist out there). Maybe
the UI would seem better if users were not already used to something else?

Someone else mentioned that it seems like the ribbon takes up a lot of
vertical screen real estate. I agree this certainly seems true, but Jenson
addressed this in an interesting blog post:
<http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/04/17/577485.aspx>

Also, you can always minimize the ribbon if you want more space for your
documents.

After spending a lot of time studying the theory behind the ribbon UI, I
expected that users would react to the UI negatively at first but eventually
come around to liking it. So I'm a little surprised that the general
perception is still negative. I wonder what Microsoft could have done
differently to increase user acceptance.

Jeff

On 9/17/07, Will Parker <wparker at channelingdesign.com> wrote:

> I think a lot of solidly Windows-oriented software companies will
> play follow the leader. The usual suspects will treat ribbons as a
> spray-on skin, whether it's a good fit or not.
>
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