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Fun Factor

Unless you've just awakened from a Rip Van Winkle-style hibernation, you probably heard that Microsoft released the Xbox 360 last night at midnight.  The local news in Seattle was stationed outside of the Best Buy I normally go to in Bellevue, giving up-to-the-minute updates about the progress of the line (several hundred people long) and breathless testimony about Bill Gates inside "playing games and meeting the Best Buy staff."  I will say this: it's a frigid night in Seattle (low 40s and foggy) so I hope a lot of the people who waited actually got a console tonight.

As you might expect, I have friends and acquaintances who have worked on Xbox 360, and I'm happy for them that they finally are starting to reap the rewards and can kick back and enjoy the upcoming holidays.

As for me, I don't have one yet, but I do plan on getting one eventually.  Unfortunately, there's no employee discount or purchase program or anything like that.  In fact, the launch mail sent to everyone at Microsoft tonight implored us to "make plans to visit retailers early, and check back often, to pick up yours."

The whole Xbox 360 launch got me thinking about fun.  I'm a big believer that software can be fun to use--even a piece of productivity software like Microsoft Office.  But maybe that just cements my status as a hopeless geek.

Microsoft isn't one of those companies which focus groups itself to death (at least not in the Office group.)  But, from time to time, our product planning and marketing teams do lead focus group-type discussions to gauge the impact of certain marketing messages and to get a sense for how to talk about the product.

The first of these around the UI happened over a year ago now, in several major cities.  Marketing showed some mockups of the UI along with a voiceover explaining a little bit about how it would work.  Then, the people were asked to evaluate several different possible ways of communicating the new UI.  They were also given a list of words such as "innovative, fun, disorienting, bleak, optimistic, useful" and asked to rate on a 1 to 10 scale how closely the adjective fit the software prototype.

One of the words that people had a fairly negative reaction to was "fun."  I seem to recall that we had a statement like "The new user interface makes working with Office more fun."  While some people did agree with the statement, many people did not and revealed why in ad hoc comments: "Fun is playing with my kids, not sitting in front of the computer!"  "I go to work to WORK, not to have FUN.  WORK is not FUN."

So maybe it's beyond the reach of software to be fun for non-geeks.  Or, maybe the definition of "fun" needs to be a bit more liberal when describing the experience of using something we ourselves call "productivity software."

What I do think software can aspire to is to try to inspire a sense of possibility.  A sense that suddenly you're an expert at something than formerly seemed beyond your grasp.

Yesterday I mentioned that I thought Live Preview was fun.  Well, in a way I think it is.  Because the the combination of galleries, the Ribbon, and Live Preview, and I can see 25 great ways for my chart to look in about 10 seconds.  I'm not an expert, but I feel like one.

The software is making me look smart.  It's giving my ego a boost and making me feel like I know what I'm doing.  I feel in control, and I want to explore more of the galleries to see what else I can do with a single click.

That to me is "fun."  I kind of know what I'm doing, the software is responding to me, making me look good, and inspiring in me that sense of possibility.  I'm inspired to create better things.  Maybe it's not fun like "whee, we're going to Cedar Point to ride Millennium Force", but it's not a bad feeling either.

Is Office 12 all the way there?  Of course not.  But I think we've at least taken the hard first step at orienting the software towards positive, enabling experiences that make people look good at what they do.  This is a goal we should strive for every version.

Is using Office 12 anything like the Xbox 360 kind of fun?  Nah, probably not.  But if it was, your company probably wouldn't put it on your PC at work...

Posted: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 7:00 AM by jensenh

Comments

Skip C. said:

>Maybe it's not fun like "whee, we're going to Cedar Point to ride Millennium Force", but it's not a bad feeling either.

How funny to see someone on the west coast refer to Cedar Point! Millennium Force happens to be one of my favorites, and my friends and I make an annual trek to CP in the fall.

> I'm a big believer that software can be fun to use--even a piece of productivity software like Microsoft Office. But maybe that just cements my status as a hopeless geek.

Pretty much, but you aren't the only one. Try being a computer AND coaster geek!

Keep up the great work on the blog! I am very excited about this new version of Office - it will certainly keep me in a job (MOS Master Instructor here) for years to come :)
# November 22, 2005 11:26 AM

Joel Dinda said:

Methinks it's not constructive to impose a geek interpretation on the focus group answers you've shown us. I expect that if you ran the same test on the folks I work with, you'd get similar results, that I could predict those results, and that the correlation would not reflect anything I'd call a geek quotient.

Folks in all kinds of jobs love (or hate) their work. Other folks (again in all kinds of occupations) deliberately compartmentalize their lives into work (not fun) and real life (the worthwhile things I do when I'm not paying the bills). Just people, being people.
# November 22, 2005 2:38 PM

Andy said:

It's important to differentiate between marketing speak "fun" and real people fun.

In the real world people equate fun with enjoyment, relaxation, lack of concern; to have fun with a computer means to most people doing something that has no real value, it is entertainment.

Of course the geek element enjoys finding out how things work, there is some satisfaction to be gained by making something look great, but most people hate the idea of just playing with a UI as they would do this only when they are confused and this is the exact opposite of fun.

In marketing land there is no difference between the satisfaction at finally having got the damn thing done, and a fun experience. Gratification of any kind is listed under marketing fun, but real people just don't go all Harry met Sally at the site of a finally crafted roll over state.

Telling someone office software is fun is patronising and false, but then so is all marketing.
# November 22, 2005 4:54 PM

dan.g. said:

perhaps the word 'enjoy' would have been less provocative.

after all i can enjoy many things such as a book, wine, food, sport, software without necessarily having fun.

i also think that the most desirable attribute of software is that it does not engage the user in such a way that they are distracted from their chosen task. ie a good spade is one which does the job without you having to constantly be alerted to the fact that you are using a spade.

wondering if the user is having fun using office seems to be rather missing the point of why they're there, which is to get something done and move on the next thing. if they can do that without even knowing they're using any specific software then the goal of perfect software has been achieved. everything else is about wanting to be noticed which strikes me as the antithesis of great software.
# November 22, 2005 6:33 PM

Michael Zuschlag said:

Steve loved work in the machine shop but especially with jobs like this: a tricky part to make, and no NC --all manual milling. He's looking forward to it. This calls for the trusty Bridgeport mill. Reliable, precise, effortless, no surprises. Using the Bridgeport, its only Steve and a slab of metal stock, the final shape emerging directly from his consciousness. Most satisfying. The boss says, "You just think that old Bridgeport is fun to use." No. But jobs like this are fun when you have the right tool.
# November 23, 2005 10:33 AM

dan.g. said:

i agree michael, but the fun thing for steve was making the part not necessarily using the tool. if you have fun using the tool then you're focussed on the wrong thing. that's the problem with machines with lots of flashing lights and gizmos, they look fun to use but in practice the lights and gizmos are more distracting than useful to the task in hand.
# November 23, 2005 6:16 PM

Mathias Raacke said:

I got beta 1 a few days ago, and for me, discovering all the new features and the new UI is fun! :)

I love the new UI, it's great! Really great work!

Sometimes it took me a while to find something. The feature that took me the longest time to find was "word count". I guessed correctly that it would be somewhere under the "review"-tab, but I didn't expect it to be under "Proofing tools", although it probably makes sense to put it there.

Another feature I had to search longer are the new IGX graphics, because I did not now that they are called "IGX". I still don't know what IGX means :). I had to ask somebody to find out that IGX was what I was looking for.

Sometimes it's still a little slow, but that's ok for a beta 1. I worked on a few documents and it was really easy to do everything I needed to do. This will be great product once it is finished! :)
# November 25, 2005 1:47 PM

Abigail said:

Belatedly, I'd like to add a thanks for the shout-out to Cedar Point, the best coaster park in the nation! I spent most of my childhood in Michigan and fondly remember our annual visits to "America's Roller Coast"!
# November 28, 2005 1:37 PM

Jensen Harris An Office User Interface Blog Fun Factor | Wood TV Stand said:

PingBack from http://woodtvstand.info/story.php?id=8389

# May 31, 2009 7:12 PM
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