rangerBlog - May 20th, 2007

04:48 pm - Office 12 and a complete lack of understanding what 'Human Interface Guidelines' means

I admit, right off, that I'm an interface snob. After all- I used to be a mac user! But by the time I switched over to PC's, they'd ripped off enough of the mac User Interface that they had at least a tolerable UI of their own-- even if it wasn't on purpose and they didn't understand what they were doing.

I've actually sat down and read Apple's Human Interface Guidelines cover-to-cover (admittedly, this was back when Copeland was the Next Big Thing.) Brilliant document. Not perfect- but it had a method to things that allowed you to translate skills and experience with one program to another program- because the overall layout of all controls was, to some degree, logical. Everything looked like it was 'supposed to' to aid you in figuring out what was what.

...and then there's Microsoft. For years, studies showed that people who'd NEVER used Windows before were faster at picking up the new Operating systems Microsoft put out than people who had used Windows before. Why is that? Because every major generation upgrade, Microsoft thinks it's cute to completely redesign its User Interface, the way windows work, where controls are located, etc. We get new icons so they can look 'fresh and modern', because it's not liek the point of an icon is to immediately tell you what kind of file you're dealing with or anything, right?

PressPass: Can I upgrade to Office “12” but keep the old UI’s look and feel?

Larson-Green: No, we don’t have a “classic mode.” We surveyed customers to find out what would help people transition, and they told us they really wanted us to help them move forward, rather than doing any kind of classic mode.

Bugger bugger bugger!

Haaate. Let me translate this for you! "Our products are top-heavy monoliths, and frankly it's a miracle we could put out ONE working User Interface, let alone two! Because that whole 'skining' thing that every other computer company on the face of the earth has embraced... we can't figure it out."

There is no 'Tools' menu! Why do I have a menu called 'mailings' in Word? They fucked up the zoom controls- i now have to go into a seperate sub-menu to set a custom zoom size and--

I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE ANYTHING IS. AT ALL.

THERE IS NO EDIT MENU.

I can understand wanting to modernize, and optimize, and what-have-you... they got rid of the edit menu. The menu that every single computer program has had for 25 years! The innovations they introduced in this UI are not great enough to allow them to do this.

Right, so anyway... I now have to either track down some install disks for an OLDER version of office, or maybe give Google's new online applications a try.

It's good to know that despite the vast strides Microsoft has taken towards etc etc etc... they can still provide me reasons to actively want to seek out other products despite the obvious advantage of ubiquity Microsoft has.