Designing Against a Degrading Experience

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

John Topley — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 18:18:52 GMT

"As a result, one of our goals for the Office 2007 user interface is that Day 1 looks like Day 101."

Isn't this the wrong way round i.e. it should say that Day 101 looks like Day 1?

re: John Topley

Max Howell — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 19:34:27 GMT

Well it doesn't really matter which order you put two identical things:

a == b
b == a

But yes, the other way round (day 101 looks like day 1) makes the point clearer.

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

John Topley — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 19:44:40 GMT

The things aren't identical in this case though, because the UI has potentially gone through 100 days' use by Day 101 and could look very different from how it did on Day 1, which is Jensen's point.

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

Stephen Bullen — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:13:54 GMT

For every few people who made their toolbars float over their document by accident, there's one who made a conscious choice to move their icons close to where they're working, by tearing-off menus, floating builtin toolbars or creating a custom floating toolbar - all of which has been lost in Office 12.

This is one case where you've definitely thrown the baby out with the bath water.

You'd make a lot of people much happier you gave us multiple, floatable, dockable QATs and a simple "Day 1" tool for those who daren't close a toolbar.

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

Tyler Reddun — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:29:20 GMT

I for one am happy your getting rid of the 'menu as a toolbar' that broke so many parts of the standard UI, it never worked right and failed with most accesability. It's a feature right up there with the dynamic menus.

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

ThomThom — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:50:47 GMT

After reading this blog I'm actually tempted to try this new Office. I'm really interested in thsi new uder interface.
Mind you, the reason I dropped Word in the first place was that it went crazy the moment I tried to add more than two images to a page. I'm a really basic user of office applications. I write the occational report or letter and I use spreadsheets for my expenses. Nothing fancy.

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

Karl Traunmüller — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:54:11 GMT

Another (straight-forward, though radical) way would be to disallow UI customization at all.

regards,
Karl

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

Dennis DeRobertis — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:56:54 GMT

For those of you who may think Jensen is exaggerating with the toolbar or "GUI sprawl" comments, he's not. Just this morning I was working with a co-worker on some Excel reports and she had 1/3 or more of her Excel window filled with toolbars. You can tell, too, the toolbars were never moved from their original locations given all the gaps and spaces between them. And she's a competent Excel user.

Here's hoping the ribbon reins in today’s GUI sprawl.

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

Lukas — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 02:59:11 GMT

I'd like to Stephen Bullen's comment. I'm very particular about UI and screen real estate in particular - please don't take away my ability to create a comfortable work environment.

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

Matt Turner — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 03:40:04 GMT

I quite liked the way palettes and features dock in Macromedia products.. well, Flash anyway. Version 6 i believe was the best, before it got too bogged down with fancy graphics that slowed it up.

Anyway, you could order them into whatever logical groups you wanted (e.g. styling / programming / whatevering) they snapped to each other but each one had a minimize button going on.

I'm a neat freak when it comes to my personal user interfaces and how they're setup so this doesn't really affect me but very interesting to read about it.

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

Derick Lyle — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 04:05:16 GMT

I like the fact that you are thinking about users who are not confident in their computing experience, and therefore never close, move or otherwise deal with anything the computer does to them. However, as a confident user, I've come to hate the novice interfaces that get thrown at me, where I have to interpret the "simple speak" into what I know is really going on behind this, and what I actually prefer to deal with. So, to the points made previously, please don't take away the power that let's users be power users.
Final point, can we look at making docking to the left or right instead of up top really usable? Documents are long, screens are wide (especially the new widescreen notebooks). I'd rather give up screen real estate at left or right rather than lose a paragraph or two and have to spend my life scrolling up and down. Take a leaf out of the Visual Studio .Net book, they got it right.

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

Suzanne S. Barnhill — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 04:58:57 GMT

To add to what others have said about user customization (I want it--and not just on the QAT), disabling or hiding features that are not available makes support that much more difficult. I already spend a lot of time either opening a document containing a table or inserting a table in a blank document just so I can access Table Properties in order to provide a user with explicit instructions (with exact terminology) for solving a table problem.

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

Jon Peltier — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 06:14:01 GMT

Karl:

"Another (straight-forward, though radical) way would be to disallow UI customization at all."

I hope this was tongue-in-cheek, because this is what Office 2007 is already doing. If I couldn't customize my workspace, it would take me twice as long to do anything. My menus and commandbars are heavily customized in general, and hardly a day goes by when I don't find a reason to make a temporary floating toolbar to put a couple handy buttons right next to where I'm working.

Unfortunately, MS is focusing on the beginning users, the ones at Day 1, who will never progress beyond Day 1, and who need a UI nanny to close the unused toolbars. And of course, the new UI nanny puts away the tab I need right before I want to click on it. Why should my Day 101, and Day 1001, look like it does out of the box? One size does not fit all.

I'm with Stephen and Suzanne on this issue. Though it could become cumbersome, the UI in Office 97-2003 is remarkable in its flexibility and in its ability to improve productivity by allowing tasks to be placed a single click away.

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

Charles Williams — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 18:09:31 GMT

I suspect that the new EUI (and its lack of customiseability) inevitably suits some Office Apps better than others.

Hopefully we will see a substantial increase in ability to customise (and a Reset button!) before RTM, so that the pain can be eased for the non-casual users of the less well-suited Apps.

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

David Bosman — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 20:45:14 GMT

"I'm with Stephen and Suzanne on this issue. Though it could become cumbersome, the UI in Office 97-2003 is remarkable in its flexibility and in its ability to improve productivity by allowing tasks to be placed a single click away."

+1
I haven't seen the beta of Office, wich seems very promising, but I do hope there'll be a way to (heavily) customize UI. Please, don't forget your power users.

If i may ask, what'll happen of Word's fullscreen mode ? I use (and like) it so much. It's probably the best way to get rid of all distractions while writing.

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re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

Shauna Kelly — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 11:00:15 GMT

I am writing to second Stephen Bullen's comments. Having several, floating toolbars, positioned near my work, is essential my being productive.

Floating toolbars are especially important to me when using a Tablet.

On a desktop PC, a mouse trip from mid-screen to a toolbar, ribbon or QAT at the top of the screen feels like a lot of movement. And it takes a long time. A custom floating toolbar, holding just the tools I need right now, eliminates that problem.

On a tablet PC, moving from middle to top of the screen is a large physical movement of the hand, arm and shoulder. It can be physically tiring. I find that small, floating toolbars reduce that movement and make me productive again.

I hope that Microsoft will re-consider its thinking about removing users' ability to customize Office.

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

Dawn Crosier — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 21:08:21 GMT

I agree with Stephen, Suzanne, Jon and Shauna. I customize my workspace and float my toolbars to be physically close to where I am working in my document. In the little bit of work that I have been able to accomplish in Word 12, I have found it very labor intensive to switch between the contextual tabs that keep closing just as I am reaching to use them.

Word 2003 enabled me to minimize my clicks to get a new object since the toolbar could be available, floating on the desktop.

I have already placed 15 items on the QAT for working on this one project having to do with graphics. I suspect that the number will grow exponentially as I get further into designing this newsletter and continuing to run across items that are no longer available on the current tabs. (Such as the ability to select several objects, WordArt, Textbox, and Picture and center align them. These tools used to be found on the Drawing Toolbar, on the tear away tab called Align or Distribute.)

Dawn

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

Echo Swinford — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 23:42:43 GMT

"We hope to walk into a site visit after someone's been using Office 2007 for a year and have it look as clean as it did in the screenshots on the back of the box."

Looking pretty doesn't get the job done. Just because the interface stays as clean as it was on day one doesn't make it efficient.

Add my voice to Stephen, et al. Losing the ability to customize the ribbon and tear off menus and tools is degrading my productivity.

re: Designing Against a Degrading Experience

Louis — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 07:23:58 GMT

I use and love the Office 2007 beta, despite the crashes. I've been using 2003 since its first beta, and gah, was it feeling stale!

Anyway, having read most of the comments to this post, I felt I had to reply to correct some assumptions.

1. The ribbon tabs aren't customizable, but there's an Addons spot and an area for frequently used commands, shown at all times, like the QuickLauch area on your Taskbar next to the Start button. (Only this is at the top of your Office window.)

2. 10x more useful than Smart Tags, there's a special new floating toolbar that appears above the right-click context menu, and when you hover your mouse near a selection. (With common stuff like bold, italic, etc.) It's amazing. And as you move the mouse away from the selection, it fades ... so it's not annoying either.

Plus it looks and feels so much better than in screenshots. It's something you have to really use to appreciate. If I accidentally start Word 2003, I feel sick, with all the buttons and clutter. (Even one toolbar is too many, compared to the new Ribbon layout.)

Don't knock it until you try it, in Beta 2. (Which should be public, I think, like 2003's.)

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