What programs get the new Office UI?
A number of programs and services make up what is now called the
Microsoft Office System. Not all
of them will include the new user interface I've been blogging about in Office
12.
The programs which do get the new user interface:
- Word
- Excel
- PowerPoint
- Outlook (except for the shell)
- Access
A couple of reasons we started with this set. Number one, they are the
set of programs that people use the most, so we could make immediate impact
there. Number two, we really wanted to concentrate the new user experience
on making the
document authoring experience better, so we started with the programs most
centered around document creation (e-mails, slide decks, spreadsheets, papers,
memos, etc.)
Access, is it turned out, was planning a major upgrade to their user
experience this release so it only made sense to include them in the mix rather
than have them try to push up against the limits of the old system. In
retrospect, it was lucky to have Access along for the ride because making sure
that the user experience worked for a database program stretched and
strengthened our concepts. I have much greater confidence that the Ribbon
and Contextual Tabs and all the rest make sense for a wide variety of rich
programs because we've had to make sure it worked for Access.
And I think it was a win for Access as well, because one of their goals is to
be approachable and usable by someone who maybe uses Excel today but doesn't
think to use Access. I'll be posting later about how the new UI concepts
map to Access.
Long term, I think we'll see more Microsoft applications start to use the new
user interface. The amount of time and care that goes into converting a
program cannot be underestimated; it requires fundamentally reaffirming what the
soul of the app is. It's not just "put each menu item on an index card and
re-arrange them into the Ribbon." It requires a major collaboration
between the user experience team, the application team, usability, research, and
other shared teams that build features across Office.
For an interaction designer, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and so
we wanted to put as much thought into doing a great job for the Office 12 wave
of programs as we could. Because we had to design the interaction
concepts, the visuals, and the way the apps use the interaction design all
at the same time, it was a tall order even to do the number of programs we did
this time. As a result, some programs (Project, InfoPath, OneNote, etc.)
continue to use the existing "menus and toolbars system" in Office 12.
I'm sure once we ship Office 12 and have a chance to start thinking about the
next version we'll evaluate again what parts of the system it makes sense to
move over next to the new UI.
P.S. A big shout out to the Office MVPs in town for the MVP Global Summit
here in Redmond. I had a great time talking to many of you yesterday and
putting faces with names. Hope you enjoy the rest of your time here!
