Development History of Microsoft Office software interface (Part 2)

(3) More and more people feel "Swollen"

Office 97 is a milestone product that adds a lot of new features, but it also adds complexity to the user interface, making people feel that office is "too swollen ". In fact, the applicationProgramIt is not "Swollen". At least, a large number of features required by users indicate that people want the UI team to do more things in this space. However, the menus and toolbar are not commensurate with the rich features of the product, which makes the user interface feel swollen. In this way, a new UI mechanism is introduced in Office 2000 to reduce the feeling of being swollen, which also marks the end of re-designing the new UI in Office 2007.

In Office 2000, "Adaptive menu" tries to shorten the top-level menu by first displaying the most common menu items, frequently Used menu items are created in the "short" menu, and rarely used menu items are created in the "long" menu, as shown in figure 14.

Figure 14 adaptive menu

However, the adaptive menu is not successful, and the complexity of the interface is actually added. First, the default "short" menu contains menu items based on the assumption that "everyone only uses the same functions in office", but the truth is, users use a wide range of functions, not only limited to the "short" menu, therefore, A person's ideal "short" menu does not mean that others often use such a "short" menu.

Secondly, if you cannot find the required functions in the default "short" menu, you must browse the entire menu. In this process, you must first browse the "short" menu, click the two-way arrow below to browse the "long" menu, while the menu items in the "long" menu are between "short" menu items, so you need to browse again, which reduces work efficiency. Once again, the automatic customization feature (that is, the menu items used last time will appear in the default "short" menu) makes the menu items more messy, because a menu item is at a certain position at the beginning, and then it is not there at some time.

Therefore, the default "Adaptive menu" is disabled even if some applications (such as Publisher, project, and Visio) in Office 2007 still use the old user interface style ".

In Office 2000, the "compressed toolbar" (15) is also designed to reduce the feeling of being swollen, but like the "Adaptive menu", it also adds complexity to the user interface. The order of commands is no longer fixed, and browsing functions become inefficient.

Figure 15 compression Toolbar

Therefore, most users, especially company users, disable these two features.

The task pane in Office XP and Office 2003 also has some disadvantages. After the task pane is added, all menus and toolbars must still exist. In this way, the task pane occupies space and does not replace any existing user interfaces (UIS ). In addition, there are "short" menu, "long" menu, hierarchical menu, visual toolbar, toolbar list, and task pane in the office, so that you still need to search for commands in multiple places, added product complexity. The emergence of the task pane also makes every design team want to use their functions as a task pane. After all, the task pane is a brand new and clean rectangular box that can be placed. This makes the designer convenient, but it brings inconvenience to the user. Some task panes are similar to the wizard with multiple pages, some are actually dialog boxes, and some are just commands with a string of instructions. I didn't really think about how to make all the task panes consistent, how to find the associated functions in the old UI, and how to use the two functions at a time. In fact, each function requires its own rectangular box. Therefore, to reduce complexity, the task pane has been used as a manageable User Interface (UI) in Office 2003 ).

(4) Microsoft has been striving to make improvements to adapt its products to evolving needs.

As we can see above, the Office interface has been improved, and is improving in a more convenient way for users. For example, the "Adaptive menu" and "compressed toolbar" introduced in Office 2000 were originally intended to change the application's "Swollen" feeling, but were counterproductive, failed. Just like organizing a room, just hiding something that you think is not commonly used under the bed is good at first glance, but not actually. After analysis, this may be related to unexpected rapid development of computer hardware and software.

More importantly, we only consider the needs of a very "narrow" range of users, and the Office is also "conservative ", this can be seen from the fact that its top menu structure has never changed since 1989. But this is also a good thing for some users, because it saves the price they need to re-train.

However, no matter how it changes, if the structure of the user interface is not changed, all function extensions are in conflict. In other words, considering this, it may cause inconvenience on the other hand. In this way, the feeling of being swollen still exists. And every time you add a new UI mechanism, it will be filled up, because we only add them, but never re-organize and remove them, so the complexity of each version continues to increase.

Office 2007 user interface design basics and ideas

Menus and toolbar are not bad, but office has made great strides, making menus and toolbar unsuitable. Therefore, we need to re-design the new version of Office interface, the goal is to create a new standard user interface for these efficient applications with complete functions. Today's Office 2007 user interface has benefited a lot from previous versions and has learned from the experience and lessons learned from the improvements made by previous versions on the user interface.

(1) How to improve Office 2007

There are several ways to improve the menu and toolbar out of proportion. One is to cut out half of the functions from the product, and the rest is used as the user interface. In fact, it takes a lot of effort to redesign the other half of the function commands to be canceled, but what half of the commands should be canceled? This is difficult to choose, because it is hard to imagine which functions may be of special interest to some people.

Another way is to break down the product. For example, word will be divided into eight independent applications: text Editor, print/Page Preview program, table creation, image editing, drawing program, spelling/syntax checker, mail merge engine and envelope/label printer, each application has a manageable menu and toolbar structure. In this way, 65 icons will be placed in the Start menu when the Office is installed. However, this will completely deviate from the user's requirements. Because users often want the UI development team to integrate more and better applications.

Therefore, the Office UI development team decided not to make Office 2007 more cumbersome or "fragmented". On the contrary, to make the application a whole, and re-create the user interface so that more functions can be added in the next decade. This is why concepts such as context-related (contextualization) and graphical directories (groups, galleries) are so important to the new UI, they divide office functions into more manageable units, but maintain their integrity, making the product more powerful.

(2) a large amount of data is collected and analyzed to provide a basis for the interface design.

Shortly after the user installs office 2003, a small balloon pops up asking if you want to "help the Office do better". If you click it, you will be logged on to the Microsoft Office User Experience Improvement Program (Microsoft Office Customer Experience Improvement Program). After that, how do you use some office data information (anonymous) it will be continuously transmitted to Microsoft (Note: Don't worry, just collect usage information, such as how the software is used and what hardware is used, etc, your personal data is not collected ). This data is collected into a huge server for analysis and decision-making.

The following data types are collected: the frequency of use of commands, frequently used keyboard shortcuts, whether a toolbar is customized ,...... And so on. In short, the collected information is only the use of the software itself, and will never involve the user's private information.

After the release of Office 2003, about 1.3 billion sessions were collected. In the first 90 days, the command bar that exceeds 0.352 billion clicks in word. Of course, this data is only a small part, and it is impossible to keep all the collected data.

Therefore, this data is also one of the main reasons to help the Office UI development team make a wise decision, that is, to develop a new user interface for office 12.

Of course, data is only auxiliary, but we can also learn from it: which commands are frequently used by users, which commands are not used, which commands are used before other commands, which commands are performed on the keyboard, and the mouse is rarely used, the size of the user's screen, and how many Excel commands are used maximization, which documents are used only once, which commands are never used, and which commands are frequently used by users in East Asia ,...... And so on.

(3) five most frequently used commands in Word 2003

After a large amount of data analysis and investigation, the five most common commands in Word 2003 are listed in order ):

Paste, save, copy, undo, bold

In word 2003, the use of these five commands accounts for about 32% of the total number of commands used, and only "Paste" accounts for 11%, it is twice the number of times "save" is used.

However, the statistical curves of the 10 most commonly used commands are rather uneven. The proportion of commands used between the 100th-bit command ("accept change") and the 400th-bit command ("Reset image") is different, however, the usage ratio of the 1st-bit command and the 11th-bit command ("Change font size") is roughly the same. This shows that users actually use the Office greatly, which also brings challenges to creating new user interfaces.

(4) use data to influence and organize the Office 2007 user interface

The following is an example of how to use the data to help design the Office 2007 user interface. Initially, the Office UI development team did not seriously consider placing the cut, copy, and paste buttons in the "ribbon" area, everyone thinks that the most common operation is to use the shortcut key Ctrl + x/C/V to perform these operations. The mouse user uses the context menu item popped up after right-clicking to perform these operations. It is not known until the Office UI development team analyzes the data. Although the user uses Ctrl + V and the context menu uses the "Paste" menu item, the "Paste" button in the toolbar is more. Therefore, once you recognize the importance of the "Paste" button, it is placed in the first large button on the left of the first tab in the interface. This is also a feature of the Office 2007 interface design, that is, to put the most common commands in the most prominent position.

If the command used by the Office application is drawn in a chart, a curve is generated, and most of the commands are used, the usage of each command gradually slows down. The curve shows which commands are frequently used by users, and shows the overall structure and average "depth" of the products used by most users ". In some aspects, the Office 2003 user interface has been well implemented. Therefore, what we need to do now is to analyze the data, understand them, and use them in combination with the design to achieve a better purpose.

First, you need to find functions that are retained but rarely used to help users find useful functions that they do not know where to put them. These functions are generally existing in office, but they are not used by users because they do not know. Instead, they seek help or customize them elsewhere. Therefore, if users can find these features, they may like to use them. For example, you can set a watermark pattern behind a document in Word. Many people do not know how to implement this function, so they put it in the prominent position in Word 2007, this allows many users to regard this feature as a "good new feature ". Of course, there are also some exceptions, such as low quality or poorly designed functions, no matter how easily they can be discovered in the UI, it will be unsuccessful. Therefore, some old functions are re-enhanced to make them more appealing. For example, users rarely use functions with inappropriate names. Therefore, some function names are changed in the new UI, let more users know and use it (but it is a conflict that some users are already using these features and will change their names if they change their names ).

The second is to find features that are frequently used in non-conspicuous interfaces. For example, "superscript" in word, although it must be manually added to the toolbar through custom in Word 2003, its clicks account for 30% of the "format" toolbar. The new user interface not only highlights the features that users like, but also allows more users to know and use it.

Current Office 2007 page

(1) concise and clear design. Programs are easier to use and commands are easier to find.

The buttons are distributed at the top of the window and displayed in groups. The required commands are displayed in front of the user's eyes, and the hidden toolbar containing commands is not hidden in the menu or in a separate pane, instead, a control center is provided to bring together various elements so that they can be easily seen. The button is always displayed in the corresponding position and does not disappear.

(2) Streamline the commands provided in the command set form into the most common commands. Users' favorite and repeated commands are put in the most prominent position.

(3) divide core tasks in ribbon. Each task is represented by a tab.

(4) Many Commands are arranged by function into various command sets (that is, groups), and all the commands that may be required to complete a specific task are combined.

(5) Many Commands are displayed only when needed. That is, some commands only appear when the corresponding operation is executed, rather than always displaying each command.

(6) You can customize the "quick access toolbar (qat)" to make it the same as the toolbar in previous versions.

(7) You can easily switch views in the window.

(8) The functional area is automatically adjusted to fit the screen size.

Conclusion

It can be seen from the above that every version of the Office is to integrate user requirements as much as possible and improve toward user satisfaction, although sometimes it may be counterproductive. In addition, with the development of office, there must be a new user interface to adapt to, and the re-design of the Office 2007 user interface can be said to be a leap and innovation.

Office software itself is an art and the crystallization of Development and wisdom.

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