More about learning from the past -- Office Assistant

re: More about learning from the past -- Office Assistant

PatriotB — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 01:19:59 GMT

The thing that irks me most about Office's UI is how it always has to be different than Windows. Occasionally, things start in Office and move to Windows (e.g. borderless toolbar buttons). However, most of the time, Office always has to "do its own thing" and shun the Windows UI guidelines.

Take Office 2003. It supports XP themes for buttons and stuff, but then it goes and colorizes the menu/toolbars blue! Who came up with that? The toolbars should have the same color and behavior as standard toolbars, i.e. the ones that Windows Explorer uses.

Windows's most used software product (Office) should be changed to more closely adhere to the Windows UI guidelines.

re: More about learning from the past -- Office Assistant

steven_sinofsky — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 01:30:17 GMT

Thanks for the comment. I appreciate the discussion we could have, but I'm hoping to stick to the "meta" topics around career and the challenges of making changes.

With respect to the UI, the history is generally that the Windows UI reflects the most general elements of the UI and Office applications create new mechanisms which eventually flow to Windows. Toolbars, task panes, etc. all were in Office applications before Windows. This is something we expect to see happen over time.

As things move to Windows, in an effort to make the functionality available to developers the set of features is usually scoped so that the APIs and implementation are more amenable to broad re-use by developers.

There are places where the details and timing caused things to appear out of sync. Themes in XP is an example of that for sure.

re: More about learning from the past -- Office Assistant

Luke Chung — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 05:22:38 GMT

Nice blog. I remember getting one of the first Macs during college in 1984/85 and learning from the bundled cassette tape on how to use the mouse. It was a life changing experience to be immediately productive without having to read a manual.

Ultimately, I think progress comes down to what one can do with the new technology that couldn't be done before.

Can I build a nicer spreadsheet, Word document, graph, Access application or report, or PowerPoint presentation? Not because I learned the existing commands, but the raw capability of the program let me do new things?

UI changes may make features more accessible and easier, but it may have zero impact on the final results.

Meanwhile, a feature like exporting reports to PDF format or easily creating fill-in PDF files could be very exciting and help drive upgrade sales that menu/command bar reorganizations could never touch.

Clippy was annoying because it took over the workspace and interrupted the user. I think it was the predecessor to pop-ups ads on the Internet. It also didn't answer questions well -- certainly can't compare it to Google -- so it just pissed people off.

Do you remember also the Internet Push technology that was going to be the new thing as people wanted files sent to them all night long? A lot of companies/advertisers spent a lot of money on that initiative.

Luke

re: More about learning from the past -- Office Assistant

Aldo — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 06:50:05 GMT

You state that, to this day, you still get letters about how people love the assistant. It's not clear to me that receiving love-letters about the assistant means anything in particular. The question is, what do most of your users think? Not the reviewers, not a small sample of self-selected letters, but results driven from larger surveys that cover a potentially more ambivalent audience.

I think the assistant was actually a good idea, but I believe that people came to associate it with Office's auto-correction, auto-formatting, and behavior prediction. It thus became the punching bag--almost the agent "behind" these corrections and interruptions, even if this was technically not the case.

re: More about learning from the past -- Office Assistant

steven_sinofsky — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 09:06:11 GMT

Aldo,

You are definitely correct in that the assistant was associated with auto features. In fact I would say the one clever feature "Say you're writing a letter" probably caused like 90% of that feeling.

When we showed the assistant before, during, after the development of Office 97 people repeatedly indicated, in surveys and other scientific-like studies, that they appreciated it. Were our studies flawed? I don't know.

I agree that one should not make decisions on anecdotes. But I do weigh heavily someone who goes through the effort type draft a snailmail letter and send it--that says there is some emotion there!

--Steven

re: More about learning from the past -- Office Assistant

Dennis — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 02:36:50 GMT

Why products including Office aren't so friendly when it is so easy to make them friendly? Recently there was a great presentation given for Microsoft regarding friendly design vs. Stupid Generic Photos.

Take Office setup - you change it all the way through, add different graphics etc, but you seam not to get the point - why not to make it more friendly? Show real people doing real work, how many people where involved, international people, show the credits - like you watch in the movie titles. Images taken from the dev process. Animation, movies. Show that in the 'about' dialog like Adobe does.

Not only that will demonstrate the whole complexity of the product, and why it's not only a 2 month deal, it will put personality behind the product, lower so much a "foreign" perception. People put their names against the job they've done? That means they are responsible, and at the same time will appreciate credit if the product is successful. Needless to say, it's a good way of advertising, say a short excerpts from real dev work in the about dialog instead of all that bureaucratic stuff said there for "legal purposes" only.

re: More about learning from the past -- Office Assistant

Ravages — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 11:15:29 GMT

I loved the office assistant (from the 97 version of it with it's own frame to sit in, to the 2000 version where it hung in air)

I know pretty much every keyboard shortcut, can access menus using the keyboard too (in fact, one of my constant boasts to friends was i could use a PC/Mac all day without even looking at the mouse). Still i used the Assistant for a load of stuff. I am sorry it will die in Office 12. But I guess that's part of evolution.

Great work you guys, in blogging this all.

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