Development of the Ribbon, the fight against the sensation of bloating (“Why” of the Interface, part 3)
It was:
It became:
From myself: tape, tape, tape, tape. She is gorgeous.
Written by Jensen Haris, Director of Program Management for the Microsoft Windows User Experience Team. (Prompt adequate translation.)
')
This is the second part in my series of eight articles, in which I will point out some reasons that prompted us to make a decision on creating a new user interface in the 2007 Office.
Last time, we walked back in time and looked at the first five versions of Word for Windows. At the end of the trip, I showed you Word 97, the Mylston release, which included many new useful options and improvements. 97 The office brought with it command panels , a paradigm in which the menus and toolbars are made similar in features and appearance. Of course, this new functionality was not given free of charge, part of the price was the increased complexity in the interface, mainly due to the addition of new menu options and buttons on toolbars. In response, the press began to write about the fact that the Office was “bloated”.
But the programs themselves were not "bloated"! At least, the huge wish lists of users indicated that people, in any case, counted on an even greater number of options in the existing interface. Instead, the user interface was perceived as "bloated." Like a suitcase packed with clothes, the menu system and toolbars began to show signs of their unscalable to accommodate all the features of the program. With each release, it was getting harder and harder to fasten. Some people perceived the result as “bloated”.
Office 2000 introduced several new interface mechanisms designed to reduce this sensation of bloating. This release marked the beginning of the road in many respects, which ultimately turned towards the redesign of the interface in the Office 2007.
Word 2000
The first mechanism was called first “Adaptive menus”, and then “Personalized menus”. He was an attempt to make the top menus shorter, first showing the basic, most popular options. After a few seconds (or after clicking on the chevron at the bottom of the list of options), the menu expanded and showed all its options. The most frequently used options were included in abbreviated menus as they were used, and never used options were referred to in the “long” (hidden) menus. Such is the adaptive model, what is up to the idea behind it - well, in the end, you got only the automatically configured menus showing you the necessary ones.
Adaptive menus have been a failure. In fact, I think they made the interface even more complicated. Why? A few reasons:
As a result, even for using the old interface of the 2007 Office applications (such as Publisher, Project and Visio), we turned off the adaptive default menus .
Another mechanism to combat the feeling of bloating in the 2000 Office is fused toolbars. In this model, several toolbars can occupy one line on the screen. By default, the Standard and Formatting toolbars were fused into one line. And since there was no space for two toolbars on most of the monitors, the complex algorithm chose buttons that were little used by the idea and hid them in a hidden area at the end of itself. The mechanism was the same as with the adaptive menu - the buttons were hidden and returned to the site as used.
Fused toolbars increase the complexity for the same reason that it was increased by adaptive menus. The order of the commands was inconstant, the viewing and functioning ineffective, and the predictability suffered because the set of visible commands was constantly changing.
Result: most users, especially in companies, turned off these options.
So why did these mechanisms appear in the Office if they were so flawed?
First, remember that we analyze in hindsight. As the power of computers grew, the excitement (and not only in Microsoft) about “self-tuning” and using the power of the computer to form the interface, sharpened by the user using it, increased. Now it is easy to say that people are mainly against this idea, because it causes unpredictability, but we also know that this is mainly due to experiments, such as with the self-adjusting interface in the 2000 Office.
Second, the people who worked on these mechanisms had almost no room for maneuver. At that time, the Office was famous for the lack of fundamental changes in the interface. As I said, until the 2007 Office, the top menu structure has not changed since 1989. This stability was a virtue in the minds of many users, because no change - no retraining needed.
Any improvements needed to be made without changing the interface structure. And this is what it means: if you want to make short and long menus, you need to make the options in long menus appear in their places, otherwise you will change the order of the well-known options (which is no good).
Similarly, with fused toolbars, if the set of previously present commands cannot be changed, making them self-adjusting is the only possibility.
So, we are not smarter than the people who worked on the 2000 Office interface. (In fact, the biggest supporters of the Office 2007 interface today are the people who worked on the previous interfaces, and told us what they learned from these interfaces). They needed to reduce the feeling of “bloating” (to reduce the overcrowding of the menu and toolbars), not the content of the menu and toolbars itself. It looks like the following: when I needed to clean a room as a child, I just hid everything under the bed. At first glance, everything looks great, but this feeling lasts exactly until the search for the desired thing.
To summarize: we did not increase the suitcase, did not make the zipper more user-friendly. We just sewed a lot of pockets.
In the next article we will go on an excursion to the exhibition of special exhibits of the “ Dusty Museum of the Past of the Office ”, to the wing of the Helper (greetings, Skrepysh).
It became:
From myself: tape, tape, tape, tape. She is gorgeous.
Written by Jensen Haris, Director of Program Management for the Microsoft Windows User Experience Team. (Prompt adequate translation.)
')
This is the second part in my series of eight articles, in which I will point out some reasons that prompted us to make a decision on creating a new user interface in the 2007 Office.
Last time, we walked back in time and looked at the first five versions of Word for Windows. At the end of the trip, I showed you Word 97, the Mylston release, which included many new useful options and improvements. 97 The office brought with it command panels , a paradigm in which the menus and toolbars are made similar in features and appearance. Of course, this new functionality was not given free of charge, part of the price was the increased complexity in the interface, mainly due to the addition of new menu options and buttons on toolbars. In response, the press began to write about the fact that the Office was “bloated”.
But the programs themselves were not "bloated"! At least, the huge wish lists of users indicated that people, in any case, counted on an even greater number of options in the existing interface. Instead, the user interface was perceived as "bloated." Like a suitcase packed with clothes, the menu system and toolbars began to show signs of their unscalable to accommodate all the features of the program. With each release, it was getting harder and harder to fasten. Some people perceived the result as “bloated”.
Office 2000 introduced several new interface mechanisms designed to reduce this sensation of bloating. This release marked the beginning of the road in many respects, which ultimately turned towards the redesign of the interface in the Office 2007.
Word 2000
The first mechanism was called first “Adaptive menus”, and then “Personalized menus”. He was an attempt to make the top menus shorter, first showing the basic, most popular options. After a few seconds (or after clicking on the chevron at the bottom of the list of options), the menu expanded and showed all its options. The most frequently used options were included in abbreviated menus as they were used, and never used options were referred to in the “long” (hidden) menus. Such is the adaptive model, what is up to the idea behind it - well, in the end, you got only the automatically configured menus showing you the necessary ones.
Adaptive menus have been a failure. In fact, I think they made the interface even more complicated. Why? A few reasons:
- There was no way to set up short menus correctly by default. Although common sense says that “everyone uses the same Office options,” in reality, people use the options surprisingly different. Thus, the ideal menus for one person were completely unsuitable for another.
- When the menus were configured completely wrong, the user had to view them. But viewing adaptive menus requires as many as two passes: a short menu, a click on the chevron, and finally a long one. And because of the appearance of new options between those present in the short menus, we had to start over again. As a result, browsing the menu took twice as long. Even if the menu would have been designed by clicking on the chevron to expand only downwards (and the part already present on the screen would not change), you would be watched it at a time only at best. That's how adaptability significantly reduced the effectiveness of the menu.
- If self-tuning is not perfect, it is usually worse than not having any setting at all. Although the self-tuning algorithm, which was responsible for showing and hiding menu items, is very complex and well thought out, it was not perfect. And if he is not perfect, he often makes mistakes. (And this even if we understand that for such an option it is “right.”) Most people got a sense of randomness and unpredictability: here’s the menu option in place, but after a couple of days, it’s not there.
As a result, even for using the old interface of the 2007 Office applications (such as Publisher, Project and Visio), we turned off the adaptive default menus .
Another mechanism to combat the feeling of bloating in the 2000 Office is fused toolbars. In this model, several toolbars can occupy one line on the screen. By default, the Standard and Formatting toolbars were fused into one line. And since there was no space for two toolbars on most of the monitors, the complex algorithm chose buttons that were little used by the idea and hid them in a hidden area at the end of itself. The mechanism was the same as with the adaptive menu - the buttons were hidden and returned to the site as used.
Fused toolbars increase the complexity for the same reason that it was increased by adaptive menus. The order of the commands was inconstant, the viewing and functioning ineffective, and the predictability suffered because the set of visible commands was constantly changing.
Result: most users, especially in companies, turned off these options.
So why did these mechanisms appear in the Office if they were so flawed?
First, remember that we analyze in hindsight. As the power of computers grew, the excitement (and not only in Microsoft) about “self-tuning” and using the power of the computer to form the interface, sharpened by the user using it, increased. Now it is easy to say that people are mainly against this idea, because it causes unpredictability, but we also know that this is mainly due to experiments, such as with the self-adjusting interface in the 2000 Office.
Second, the people who worked on these mechanisms had almost no room for maneuver. At that time, the Office was famous for the lack of fundamental changes in the interface. As I said, until the 2007 Office, the top menu structure has not changed since 1989. This stability was a virtue in the minds of many users, because no change - no retraining needed.
Any improvements needed to be made without changing the interface structure. And this is what it means: if you want to make short and long menus, you need to make the options in long menus appear in their places, otherwise you will change the order of the well-known options (which is no good).
Similarly, with fused toolbars, if the set of previously present commands cannot be changed, making them self-adjusting is the only possibility.
So, we are not smarter than the people who worked on the 2000 Office interface. (In fact, the biggest supporters of the Office 2007 interface today are the people who worked on the previous interfaces, and told us what they learned from these interfaces). They needed to reduce the feeling of “bloating” (to reduce the overcrowding of the menu and toolbars), not the content of the menu and toolbars itself. It looks like the following: when I needed to clean a room as a child, I just hid everything under the bed. At first glance, everything looks great, but this feeling lasts exactly until the search for the desired thing.
To summarize: we did not increase the suitcase, did not make the zipper more user-friendly. We just sewed a lot of pockets.
In the next article we will go on an excursion to the exhibition of special exhibits of the “ Dusty Museum of the Past of the Office ”, to the wing of the Helper (greetings, Skrepysh).
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/87001/
All Articles