Not-Fun and Not-Games With Computers

[figmo]

egoldberg sent me this fascinating link about the design of the current MS Office "ribbon" (the new UI). I respect their work, but at the same time I strongly disagree with the premise on which it was started. The premise on their end was that the UI was keeping people from getting to the features. I say it was the lack of good documentation that kept people from getting to the features. People won't go looking for features they don't know are there, and at the same time MS Word still doesn't do things I want it to do, such as correctly handling numbered lists (don't even get dimakoi started on that one!).

I am still waiting for Big Gay Al to come back from the shop. This is driving me nutty. I've done benchmarks on both my old and my new laptop, and oddly enough the new one comes back nearly 2x as fast as the old one, save for some stuff with the GUI. Weird. I don't know why the new computer still seems slower, but it does.

I wound up having to totally restore the new computer from ground zero. I'm still restoring it. I am hoping the shop gets the logic board for Big Gay Al in so I can finally be fully computer functional again.

Comments

[sorek.livejournal.com]

"I strongly disagree with the premise on which it was started. The premise on their end was that the UI was keeping people from getting to the features. I say it was the lack of good documentation that kept people from getting to the features. People won't go looking for features they don't know are there, and at the same time MS Word still doesn't do things I want it to do, such as correctly handling numbered lists (don't even get dimakoi started on that one!)"

I totally agree with you here on both counts.

I use a FOSS (Free Open Source Software) outlining program called Tkoutline. The only problem is it doesn't do numbers, just bullet points, so I create the outline in that program, copy and paste it into my word doc, and then play around with turning it into a numbered list and hoping Word doesn't just puke all over it.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Microsoft documentation is execrable, but in my experience there are two kinds of people: people who never look at the documentation at all, and people who only look at the documentation if they can't figure out how it works on their own and they really want to make it work.

The big problem with Microsoft's user interface (in design, as opposed to the execution where complex operations never actually work quite right) is that every time people have gotten enough experience with it to start to feel comfortable, they release a new version where it's all different. Someone who'd never used the old version might find the new version better, but every existing user, from total computerphobe to ubergeek, finds the transition annoying. The fact that one has to play a whole new game of "how do you do this?" with every version discourages everyone who doesn't use the product very heavily (and less computer-comfortable people who do) from learning how to use the features efficiently. It's just less painful to stick with the simple things that don't change.

[egoldberg.livejournal.com]

By the way, I'm glad you enjoyed the video -- although I realized after sending it that it actually didn't even talk about the stuff that I had thought it would.

Namely, it totally avoids the rigorous research process that supported the decisions (which I felt to be so impressive that I actually took a job at the company to work on projects like that).

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

The ribbon, and the software which uses it (Office 2007 and Windows Vista, IIRC) sucks rocks. We're being forced onto 2007 shortly (i.e., the company's service contract on Office 2003 expired and MS refused to cut another, or made 2007 cheap enough that they induced a companywide switch).

I understand that the ribbon works fine for novice users; they haven't got habits to break. I, on the other hand, have 20 years of Office UI conditioning. I would kill, often and bloodily, for MS to have included a "use Office 2003 UI" option standard in O2K.