The Ribbon

"Good Enough" (I hate this term)

Jensen: "The user interface was failing our users."

(of office)

oh dear god - they've referenced "Clippy" the office assistant!

this is kinda cool - he's totally bashing his company's design choices.

The term "misguided" was even tossed around.

1st version of word = 50 ui items. 2003 had over 150 more

Pulldown menus meant for 5-7 items, non-heirarchical.

Word grew to such an extreme size these menus were no longer capable of handling the needs imposed upon them

In comes the Ribbon

Design Process of The Ribbon:

Research - Human Interface design is one part art, one part science.

User interface is the language the software uses to communicate to a human what it's capable of.

People have an emotional relationship with their computer. (on average, Office users spend more 1 on 1 time with Office than spouse)

Jensen: The Sense of Mastery of our software was gone.

Discussing Notepad - pretty simple. You feel you have mastery over it (also references Zune and MS Live Search)

(I love how he didn't show an iPod or Google instead)

The Data - showing spreadsheets of data collected by MS on usage of their products.

Discussing Design Tenents - Beliefs that are consistent with your vision

allows designers to create a cohesive design across multiple people so that it appears as one designer.

Design tenants provide resistance when there is no other.

1. A person's focus should be on their content, not on the UI. Help people work without interference.

2. Reduce the number of choices presented at any given time.

3. Increase efficiency.

4. Embrace consistency, but not homogeneity.

5. Give features a permanent home.

6. (he moves through these slides too fast!)

-- Prototypes --

Run through multiple concepts and ideas making good use of the data collected (duh!)

--Research -- Standard Usability Tests

Duration: 30-90 minutes.

Good for testing specific, isolated scenarios or products designed for infrequent use.

Longitudinal Usability Tests: Duration - weeks or months.

Single most important source of data for MS. The best data came after the first few months of usage.

Eye Tracking: Eyes are rarely where the mouse is.

Just showed the eye tracking & clicking for a user trying to find the search command in MS 2003. Took FOREVER! Totally extreme in a bad way

Jensen is finished talking. Prepping for lunch now...