THE first thing you’ll notice in the new 2007 Microsoft Office is a whole new user interface and less of the traditional menus and toolbars which have been around since the application was first introduced.
Over the years, each new version of the software had more and more menus and toolbars, up to a point when Microsoft Office 97 came out, users felt Office was “bloated” with hard-to-find features.
When Word 2003 was introduced, there were close to 300 menu items, 31
toolbars and 19 task panes, from fewer than 50 menu items and two toolbars when it first started out, says Jensen Harris, Microsoft Corp’s Office User Experience Lead Program manager.
“In a sense, we knew that we outgrew the menu and toolbar system,” he says.
Work on the Office 2007 user interface started in August 2003 and became the single biggest user interface project ever done at Microsoft, with US$300 million (RM1.11 billion) spent in research and development.
It took a team of people with various backgrounds in music, architecture, theatre art, art direction and research scientists and usability scientists to create the new user interface, says Harris.
“The thing about user interface is that it is more of an art than it is a science. In the end, the creation of a user interface is the creation of a language used for the computer to communicate with human beings. It’s really the melding of art and science and we needed both kinds of people on the team to make something like this possible,” he explains.
For the first time, the design of the new user interface was based on actual data of how people used Microsoft Office. Office 2003 users were able to opt into a Customer Experience Improvement programme that collected anonymous data about how Office is used.
With over two billion data sessions collected and hundreds of data points, Microsoft knew, for example, how many times people clicked on items and the order in which they clicked things.
Microsoft also visited users to understand how people worked. There were also monitors that tracked the direction of eye movements and the time it fixates at certain points.
It also compared the time it took for users to find certain features and reproduction of documents in both Office 2003 and 2007. The company, in addition, researched the learning curve for the new user interface and how productivity increased after specific periods of time.
Based on the research, Harris and his team were surprised at how poorly menus and toolbars actually work in usability terms.
“We really overestimated our user interface in the past. People have been familiar with menus and toolbars for a long time that everyone had sort of figured out ways of working around them, but when you actually looked at them in the usability lab, we found that they’re not very successful.”
To bring improvements, among others, the team looked at possible design concept. One design was called “the ring” and the idea behind it was to have this place to browse through the different things that were possible in Office.
“It would sort of ‘see’ when you last used them, and how long you used them,” Harris explains.
There were ideas to merge menus and toolbars, and one design came with animation that sounded like light sabres. There was also an idea for “parking spaces” where different task panes were set up, with the most important commands being on top and less important ones being below it.
What finally made it to the final user interface were the Ribbon concept and features like tabs, groups, galleries, contextual tabs, mini toolbars and live previews.
“The new user interface is about getting you the best tool when you need it, and when you don’t need it, we put it away,” Harris says.
He details that the new user interface is really designed to make the software easier to use, help users find features that are in Office, get the most functionality, be more efficient and create powerful and beautiful documents.
There may be no more menu or toolbar structure but Harris says that the user interface is not that much different from its predecessors.
“In the end, it’s still buttons that you press. It has the top line of text which very much feels like the menu bar and the things that are below it feel very much like a toolbar,” he states.
What’s important is that people get used to it very quickly, go beyond their proficiency level and discover more things they can do to be much more proficient.
“It’s our goal that people can sit down and be immediately productive with the new user interface,” he adds.
Screen shot office 2007
By Aimie Pardas
Source : Computimes
Over the years, each new version of the software had more and more menus and toolbars, up to a point when Microsoft Office 97 came out, users felt Office was “bloated” with hard-to-find features.
When Word 2003 was introduced, there were close to 300 menu items, 31
toolbars and 19 task panes, from fewer than 50 menu items and two toolbars when it first started out, says Jensen Harris, Microsoft Corp’s Office User Experience Lead Program manager.
“In a sense, we knew that we outgrew the menu and toolbar system,” he says.
Work on the Office 2007 user interface started in August 2003 and became the single biggest user interface project ever done at Microsoft, with US$300 million (RM1.11 billion) spent in research and development.
It took a team of people with various backgrounds in music, architecture, theatre art, art direction and research scientists and usability scientists to create the new user interface, says Harris.
“The thing about user interface is that it is more of an art than it is a science. In the end, the creation of a user interface is the creation of a language used for the computer to communicate with human beings. It’s really the melding of art and science and we needed both kinds of people on the team to make something like this possible,” he explains.
For the first time, the design of the new user interface was based on actual data of how people used Microsoft Office. Office 2003 users were able to opt into a Customer Experience Improvement programme that collected anonymous data about how Office is used.
With over two billion data sessions collected and hundreds of data points, Microsoft knew, for example, how many times people clicked on items and the order in which they clicked things.
Microsoft also visited users to understand how people worked. There were also monitors that tracked the direction of eye movements and the time it fixates at certain points.
It also compared the time it took for users to find certain features and reproduction of documents in both Office 2003 and 2007. The company, in addition, researched the learning curve for the new user interface and how productivity increased after specific periods of time.
Based on the research, Harris and his team were surprised at how poorly menus and toolbars actually work in usability terms.
“We really overestimated our user interface in the past. People have been familiar with menus and toolbars for a long time that everyone had sort of figured out ways of working around them, but when you actually looked at them in the usability lab, we found that they’re not very successful.”
To bring improvements, among others, the team looked at possible design concept. One design was called “the ring” and the idea behind it was to have this place to browse through the different things that were possible in Office.
“It would sort of ‘see’ when you last used them, and how long you used them,” Harris explains.
There were ideas to merge menus and toolbars, and one design came with animation that sounded like light sabres. There was also an idea for “parking spaces” where different task panes were set up, with the most important commands being on top and less important ones being below it.
What finally made it to the final user interface were the Ribbon concept and features like tabs, groups, galleries, contextual tabs, mini toolbars and live previews.
“The new user interface is about getting you the best tool when you need it, and when you don’t need it, we put it away,” Harris says.
He details that the new user interface is really designed to make the software easier to use, help users find features that are in Office, get the most functionality, be more efficient and create powerful and beautiful documents.
There may be no more menu or toolbar structure but Harris says that the user interface is not that much different from its predecessors.
“In the end, it’s still buttons that you press. It has the top line of text which very much feels like the menu bar and the things that are below it feel very much like a toolbar,” he states.
What’s important is that people get used to it very quickly, go beyond their proficiency level and discover more things they can do to be much more proficient.
“It’s our goal that people can sit down and be immediately productive with the new user interface,” he adds.
Screen shot office 2007
By Aimie Pardas
Source : Computimes
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