Be Willing To Be Wrong

re: Be Willing To Be Wrong

Dave Solimini — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 17:41:58 GMT

"People can scan disparate patterns more easily than homogenous patterns. When we use more toolbar-like layouts--a bunch of equally-spaced, equally-sized buttons, people scan them less quickly than when each chunk has a memorable layout."

I've been waiting for UI designers to notice this for years. It's analagous to reading ALL CAPS vs. mixed-case. People don't read words as combinations of letters, then read words as complete shapes, usually by scanning the top line of a word... the same holds fo graphics... it slows down perception to have everything at the same size instead of having mixed sizes -- people learn which "shape" they need to gravitate towards more quickly than they can isolate and identify a row of identically-sized shapes.

glad to see this work being done Jensen. I like the direction this is headed in.

best,
-dave

re: Be Willing To Be Wrong

anon — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 08:03:59 GMT

How old were the guys?
I am pretty sure that, for an 40er, a ribbon whose content changes according to the task or context, behaves pretty much like a blinking toolbar and thus is a problem. Better stick with the old UI. And that's why I don't understand why you guys don't offer a "classic UI" flag. (You can drop the dockable toolbars, this makes people nervous anyway).

Other than this, I wonder what are your thoughts about resiliency. When you learn a new UI, your eyes and brain cooperate to store the what's in the short term memory towards the longer term memory anytime something is resilient, for instance a particular toolbar button that the user recognizes having a particular function. As ribbons content keep changing with clicks, the resiliciency of icons being at a known location goes away and this gets very frustrating.

Last, the width and height of galleries. It's tempting to fill it up with tens or may be more graphics, but then this explodes the screen just like the Start menu. What are your thoughts?

re: Be Willing To Be Wrong

Chris Brandsma — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:24:54 GMT

I will give you this: when I saw the new UI design you guys are proposing, I immediately started rethinking the UI for my own apps.

I actually think the Ribbon is brilliant -- if properly implemented. But, I also tend to think of what it would take for me to implement that in my own applications.

That "if properly implemented" has me a little scared. While I really like the idea, I also think the design can go horribly wrong if badly done or not thought out. As with all powerful ideas, if used incorrectly they go wrong all the worse.

So what does that mean to me? If I try to use something like this, I will have sit down and think long and hard about what goes were. This is much more complicated than a simple toolbar, and it will be much easier to confuse a user if used badly.

And frankly, thinking that hard about UI scares me. :)

re: Be Willing To Be Wrong

Richard Tallent — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 06:22:29 GMT

I think one thing that is missing is a better visual cue to separate one chunk from the next. I know that simple background colors are all the rage, but the border isn't doing it for me.

A *subtle* horizontal gradiant, IMHO, would both help separate the chunks from one another visually, and give more "weight" to the sides of each chunk, allowing better left-to-right or right-to-left scanning.

re: Be Willing To Be Wrong

Mary Branscombe — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 02:33:30 GMT

1. I like the ribbon muchly
2. Even if the left of the ribbon is 'dead space' does the clipboard have to get such a honking big chunk? Many power users never use it and unless you allow customisation that really is dead space.

re: Be Willing To Be Wrong

Frank Hileman — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 19:16:24 GMT

I find the horizontal line across sets of icons, the light/dark divider, make it difficult to scan icons. It makes them look too similar in a quick glance, and unifies them in the wrong way (in a bottom/top division).

re: Be Willing To Be Wrong

AC — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 11:57:20 GMT

Is it possible to turn the titles of the sections off? "Clipboard" "Font" etc. I find them very distracting.

re: Be Willing To Be Wrong

AC — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 12:03:45 GMT

And why are some buttons so much whiter than the others ('cut', 'paste', are gray, 'bold', 'italics' etc. are so white that my first expression was that they are edit fields)?

I got used to the following simple visual cues: if it's gray, it's button, if it's white, I can click and type there.

And now you mix all this up?

re: Be Willing To Be Wrong

Marty — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 08:56:55 GMT

Personally, I love the idea. I think it's much better than the clutter of one-too-many toolbars. My only thoughts for what to change are: a) The clipboard section is fairly useless, b) The new/open/print buttons are not useless, and c) The merge cells button could be bigger, as I've never had a spreadsheet in which I did not use that extensively.

re: Be Willing To Be Wrong

sloan — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 02:45:30 GMT

"how bad the usability of the Ribbon would be because it's got icons scattered all over of various sizes"

Your answer only works for consistently used functions. Searching for a new function becomes that much more difficult doesn't it? What have your studies shown in time it takes to find a "new" function that a user is looking for?

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