A few people whose opinions I hold in high regard have told me that the Office ribbon interface is actually pretty good, and that I shouldn’t draw my conclusions from a static screenshot.
It’s a good point. What we refer to as “user interface” extends well below the surface appearance, and I should know better than to go off about something without even trying it first. What I posted was basically a gut-level reaction to that one screenshot, and should certainly not be considered expert commentary about anything, because as I have said before, I am not a designer.
But isn’t that type of gut reaction the very definition of the new user experience, though? Someone looking at a window full of icons and controls for the first time?
Part of the reason my reaction was so negative was that, in my mind, I was trying to walk through a phone conversation with a hypothetical family member who was struggling with that window. It’s not hard to imagine: “OK, now click on the delete button. It’s in the upper left of the window. It says Delete, but it’s not the big black X, it’s the smaller red X to the left and below that. No, not the red circle with the slash through it, that’s a different kind of delete. You want the X. No not the big X. You don’t see it? Are you on the ribbon tab that says Message, or the other tab that looks sort of like four interlocking rectangles? The ribbon is the main part of the window at the top. OK, why don’t I just drive over there.”
But it’s true — usability is a different aspect of the UI “problem” than (for lack of a better word) “obviousness”. As people much smarter than me have observed, a round steering wheel is kind of a strange, non-obvious way to orient a car’s wheels, and stems from a historical mechanical requirement that probably no longer exists. But nobody would really describe a steering wheel as being hard to use, and if you manufactured a car without a steering wheel you’d promptly be ejected from the industry.
Exactly. (For some reason,) This reminds me of a recent talk with a friend; she sometimes talks about her experiences reintroducing people who have been incarcerated for 5 to 50 years in that new ways of doing things are introduced sooner or later. For example:
- refusing to ride on the Skytrain because there is no driver
- being totally perplexed and baffled by “the cords coming out of people’s ears” referring to headphones
- cell phones
- mp3 players
Really, it’s just a matter of learning a new way to interact with things. Sometimes you have to let the past go and enable people to do things better, faster, more efficiently and/or more effectively.
About Office’s ribbon: I never really disliked it, if initially only for the poor reason of “a huge and highly profitable company who makes a significant portion of their revenue from this product isn’t going to introduce a worse method of doing something than there was before.” I now find the ribbon out of my way most of the time, and when I need to do something, it’s logically organized and ends up doing a better job than the previous system.
