It is tempting to suggest that, on average we use perhaps 10% of the functionality in Office. If we use so little, can we get by on a simpler application set for our needs? To answer this question, we rely on the Customer Experience Improvement Program and other, less automated research to gather large amounts of data and understand how users interact with Office.
This research reveals interesting insights into the way people work – often at odds with what a developer or IT professional would expect. For example:
- Despite the ubiquity of Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, many mouse clicks are for copy or paste.
- In Outlook, delete is used three times as often as send.
- In a sampling of 20,000 Office users each command is used at least once.
- If 10 of the least frequently-used commands were removed, it could impact 5% of the Office user base, over 30 million people.
Stats change over time, but I think you can see the pattern -If we were looking for a simpler application, which features would make the cut? Inevitably, some users would not have functionality that they use to do their business. More software may be required. As users embrace technology and start to consume large amounts of information from data warehouses, enter business data into CRM systems and collaborate with social networking sites, the requirement for yet more software may rise. Very quickly you may have over 30 different user interfaces, systems, web portals, green screen terminals and custom applications confronting the user. This creates a huge headache for the IT department, supporting, maintaining and enhancing a mess of systems.
Office simplifies the user experience and the IT maintenance workload by acting as the common user experience for not only analysing and authoring documents, but also communication, collaboration, social computing and interaction with other line of business systems. So, while Office may seem like a large suite of desktop applications, servers and web services, it’s value lies in the fact that it unifies so much of a users technology needs under a single, powerful user experience and a single manageable IT experience.
The Office Ribbon
Often simply known as “the ribbon” (although that represents just one component), the Fluent User Interface represents a revolution in the way that Office functionality is exposed to the user. Introduced in Office 2007, the approach quickly caught on, being adopted by many applications, from Microsoft and the wider software community. In 2008, renowned usability expert Jakob Nielsen noted the ribbon had strong early adoption and that:
“...it seems that the ribbon has legs and transfers beyond its document-editing origins.” (1)
Windows 7 also uses the ribbon to give a breath of fresh air to old Windows favourites such as Paint and WordPad. Windows 7 provides APIs known as the Windows Scenic Ribbon for application developers to use in their own applications. (2)
![clip_image004[4] clip_image004[4]](http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/alspeirs/WindowsLiveWriter/TheMythofSimplicity_8D87/clip_image004%5B4%5D_1.jpg)
![clip_image006[4] clip_image006[4]](http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/alspeirs/WindowsLiveWriter/TheMythofSimplicity_8D87/clip_image006%5B4%5D_1.jpg)
![clip_image008[4] clip_image008[4]](http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/alspeirs/WindowsLiveWriter/TheMythofSimplicity_8D87/clip_image008%5B4%5D_1.jpg)
Ribbons in various applications – from top to bottom: Word 2007, AutoCAD 2009 and Paint in Windows 7
The Office Button
The Office Button supersedes the file menu, surfacing commands that do things “with” your document. The Office Button contains commands for not only saving, opening and printing documents, but also to manage the document through its lifecycle. The Office button is the central place to expose commands that prepare the document for distribution, manage metadata and document properties, workflow, integration with backend servers and web services.
Note that the ribbon still retains a legacy from the file menu – the Alt-F keyboard shortcut.
Further Reading
1. Year's 10 Best Application UIs. Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox http://www.useit.com/alertbox/application-design.html .
2. Windows Scenic Ribbon: Developer Resources. Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ScenicRibbon .