New Rectangles to the Rescue? (Why the UI, Part 4)

re: New Rectangles to the Rescue? (Why the UI, Part 4)

joe — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 18:14:48 GMT

I, for one, HATE the "New Document" task pane. Even after creating hundreds (thousands?) of new documents in Word, Excel, and PPT, it still takes me a second after clicking File > New to realize that either 1) there is a task pane over on the right, or worse 2) the existing task pane has slightly changed to a new 'New Documents' task pane. Even after so many times, I'm still expecting to see a dialouge box when clicking File > New. Not to mention, the New Documents task pane is hard to read - the list of different types of 'New Documtents', the template list, the search box, all the various links to online services, etc.

i'll be happy to see that go

re: New Rectangles to the Rescue? (Why the UI, Part 4)

Howard Cooperstein — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 20:42:44 GMT

I agree with Jensen's points that on the whole they were not used effectively -- but the mechanism itself is not corrupt. I led the PowerPoint team's UI redesign in Office 2002 and we found them incredibly useful as modeless alternative to a dialog. We *replaced* the layout, transition, slide design among others. The overall interaction flow of PPT2002's UI is markedly improved over PPT2000 because of careful use of task panes.

By rethinking the whole UI, task panes were not additive for us. We built the product (almost) as if we had that UI element from the beginning of time. When apps simply put new features there but left others (that would benefit from a task pane) in dialogs, the resulting overall experience was not rational.

The worst part of the task pane mechanism was the navigation UI at the top which only navigated between task panes. Since TP's were deliberately a subset of the overall UI... it was a navigation short circuit and valueless. Happily, for the task panes that remain in Office 2007, the nav UI has been eliminated.

re: New Rectangles to the Rescue? (Why the UI, Part 4)

LeMel — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 00:15:39 GMT

In my company, we have put the Word task pane to good use. We have created a custom comany stylesheet for all of our templates that everyone here has adopted. This was a big win as folks maintain a lot of freedom within their templates, yet can instantly format tables, marginal notes, etc. with the 'company style.'

I was also impressed by the ability to create research services, and planned to implement some in the future.

I am hoping to use Word as a client for creating structured XML documents in a way that is faily invisible to the authors.

Our users see Outlook, Word, and IE as their primary interfaces to the computer, and any service we can deliver *in context* is a big win for us.

And personally, I love alt-clicking on a word an seeing the task pane open up to a thesaurus.

There were a number of good things about the task pane, and while I agree with everything said about the UI confusion, I hope that the very productive conceptual babies doesn't go out with their rectangular bathwater.

LeMel

Converge » links for 2006-04-05

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Walking through Jensen's museum

Wouter van Vugt — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 11:06:13 GMT

re: New Rectangles to the Rescue? (Why the UI, Part 4)

Alex — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 20:29:36 GMT

You need to have a user experience level that corresponds to the user interface presented. Super expert users would be presented options in small icons with no attached descriptions, all helper features turned off and a high level of customization available (and better handling of custom configurations as in save as many was you want per user per office app). Lowest level would be all helper features on, all advanced features cloaked behind a more simple and desciptive set of menu items etc. Even the user level and associtated characteristics should be visible and completely configurable.

I am a power user of word excel and access and I doubt I use more than 10% of the menu items and tool bars, I mostly want a tool box that will hover and change context depending on my historical tasks (related to whatever I am doing at present).

re: New Rectangles to the Rescue? (Why the UI, Part 4)

Nit — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 09:05:29 GMT

Hi, I've just come across this blog yesterday afternoon and till this morning, i've devoured a large number of your posts! I find that very interesting.

BTW, I'm an advanced office user and an excel developer.

About the office assistant, I really hated it as from the month I discovered it in Office 97. However, I really love the textbox (as from office 2002 i think) where you can "Type a question for help". But, one thing I really like about the Assistant is the Tip at startup. I allows me to learn new things about the app i'm using and sometimes that's very helpful. The problem is that we get the same tips often.

Could you keep that tip of the day in 2007 and improve it please. I'm sure there are many ppl who like to learn in this way. I personally won't go take a training on excel now so I like to learn new things while working.

Thx

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While walking through Jensen's museum of Office Past I came across several fun posts: Combating the perception

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