> On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Tom Dell'Aringa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm working on an interface for a new product and considering using the MS > fluent user interface as a model instead of your basic menus. [...] > > http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA101679411033.aspx > > Which is a fine overview but doesn't quite get too deep. Anyway, I'm > wondering what your thoughts are on the interface. Is it effective? Like or > dislike and why? > >> On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 9:48 AM, Nick Iozzo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> It is hard to comment on this design from a neutral point of view. I have >> used it for a while, I was very use to the old office design and where to >> find things. I find myself struggling to find things I use to be able to >> find effortlessly. On the other hand, I have found things I never knew >> existed. So it has some benefits. >>
Hi Tom, I'm not the right person to make a comment on the interface. I've installed this Office version without been aware that it was totally different from the previous concept, and I got very surprised when I started using it. But, as Nick, as I'm much more used to the old model, I thought it would be such a pain to "learn" everything again in this new interface and decided to use an older version, instead of trying the new one. This may be something to think about. To what extent the familiarity users have with an interface is something that we have to consider when designing a new proposal? For some users sometimes it's more important to be familiar with a "not so good" interface than to have to learn a better one? One of Microsoft's team arguments to this new interface is that it makes us more aware of the options the program have. The commands, they say, are more evident in the interface. My first impression when I opened MS Word was that I had too many options on the screen! It was overwhelming. They say they have "cleaned" the interface, but I had the opposite impression. I wanted a "clean" interface, and the new one was cluttered with buttons, tabs, icons and other stuff. As I wasn't expecting "a change", and as I was also needing to work at once, I couldn't even figure out if the change was for better or for worse. To me, at that point, changes were not good at all, just because they were unexpected, and I had not time to learn something new. And talking about "most used commands", one particular thing that has nothing to do with the interface, but with the software itself, is that most Office applications have too many options. I guess most of them are useless to the majority of users. Jasper van Kuijk has pointed that in his Uselog: http://www.uselog.com/2007_09_01_archive.html I quote him: "At a US conference Bill Gates gave the development team of Microsoft Excel a huge compliment for the features they had come up with in the new version of Excel. Too bad that those 'new features' already had been a part of the spreadsheet program for last three years. Gates had simply not noticed them in the previous version. However, Gates was in good company. Steve Ballmer (Gates' successor) revealed that most Office users have no idea of what was possible with the software package. 'Nine out of ten of the new possibilities people would like to have in the new edition of Office, were already part of the current one,' according to marketing manager Paul Coleman. 'The users simply couldn't find them.' Research Microsoft performed revealed that office workers that used Office 2003, only used 23 'core features' on a regular basis. For your reference: Microsoft Word alone offers 1500 tasks. By performing an extreme makeover on the user interface of the Office package, Microsoft claims to have been able to raise the number of features that are used regularly to 60 or 70." Office is to me one of the worst software I know. Even after using it for more than 10 years, I still have a hard time to find commands and to use it. Still, I'm very curious about this new interface. Maybe I'll give it another try sometime, to see if it's better or not. Till now, the "fear of change" is something that is making me avoid this interface, as a regular user. The designer is curious, though. ;-) And maybe you could share some thoughts about it when you get depper into this subject. :-) regards, -- prof. mauro pinheiro universidade federal do espírito santo centro de artes depto. de desenho industrial ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
