Reasons behind Office 2007 UI

Question

Since most of the people having to change from Office 2003 to 2007 in their office are confused, it amuses me if there is an objective reason for abandoning the good old interface of previous Offices.

It would also be nice to have some backing facts when people ask about rationale of change. For example I would be interested in:

• Was there a study telling that new users without any prior Office knowledge can adapt or use the new interface more efficiently?
• What are the strong points of the new UI from a designer perspective (which function is more accessible than before; which important pieces of information are more apparent? etc.)

Collazo

This should probably be on SuperUser since it's more user-interface related, rather than programming related. – Shop

"If you don't change the interface, nobody notices". – Hairspring

At least I'm not alone when I can't find the Save option and just press Ctrl+S instead. – Oliverolivera

I don't think this needs to move to superuser.com -- he's asking about the development methodology and the UI design considerations, which are I think more relevant to developers building their own UIs than to users trying to accomplish end-user tasks. – Glottochronology

Answer 1

For more answer than you probably want, you should read this excellent series of posts by an Office UI developer about why they decided to build a new UI for Office 2007. The basic reasons boiled down to:

• The old, toolbar-based UI was already overcluttered, and there was no place to put new features.
• It was difficult for users to discover the features that were already there.

Britishism

Answer 2

Jensen Harris, one of the Office 2007 team, wrote extensively about the design process, the information they used to guide the design, and how they evaluated the designs they came up with: see http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/tags/Why+the+New+UI_3F00_/default.aspx for the main set of articles and the rest of his blog for additional info.

Glottochronology

Answer 3

One thing I think worth keeping in mind is that the ribbon UI isn't designed just for existing users.

I personally think that it IS more user friendly once you get to know it (it makes sense to see something visually rather than bury it in a menu), and from the anecdotal evidence I've seen* many new users prefer it.

We just started rolling it out at work, and while there have been grumbles, there have also been many positive reactions to it.

Igorot

Add to that the fact that the ribbon interface has become amazingly popular too... there are imitations of it all over the place. Amazingly, users new to the interface adapt VERY quickly and with very little resistance: which goes to shows how well MS did the job. – Bick

In my experience, users who were power users tend to dislike the Ribbon, because all their tips and tricks and shortcuts are gone, but users who are new to office do like the ribbon better, because it's a more organized and readable way to navigate. – Cushion

Answer 4

Microsoft published a paper on this. I haven't read it.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/6/f/16fd06b3-7059-4e21-adf4-9fbdcb9a2853/MsftOfficeUIAnsResearch.pdf

Gavel

Answer 5

I guess the new ribbon UI provides a more natural and better user experience than the old one. People usually complain coz they are so used to the old way of doing things.

An example of bad design in the old UI is in the "File" Menu, you have the "Exit/Close", which does not make sense, as with the windows xp taskbar "Start" button, that contains the "Shut down", notice how windows vista/7 has the windows logo instead of the "Start" word.

Just my two cents.

Nunci