4 ms·

As an ex trader, I can confirm that the new ribbon interface, when it first came out, caused me and my colleagues a world of pain. We knew all the shortcuts ke

by osrec 6y ago

As an ex trader, I can confirm that the new ribbon interface, when it first came out, caused me and my colleagues a world of pain. We knew all the shortcuts keys in the old version. The ribbon UI meant that a big chunk of the previous shortcuts didn't work anymore. Killed our productivity for a good few months.

sxg 6y ago
Had the ribbon interface been the original UI and the traditional menu-based interface the new UI, it sounds like you and your colleagues would have still faced the same frustrations. To me, it sounds like your issue is with change rather than the effectiveness of either type of UI.
- osrec 6y ago
  No, not really. Some 1 or 2 key shortcuts became 5 key shortcuts with the new ribbon UI. It was a real nightmare! Especially when the old shortcuts were also remapped to a completely different function, and your moving s so fast you don't realise where your data has gone!
  - ModernMech 6y ago
    The ribbon allows you to add your most common used commands to a quick shortcut list that are only 2 keys.
- danShumway 6y ago
  For me, that's the point. For a program as ubiquitous as Word (and as complicated as Word), unless there were clear benefits from the new interface, it shouldn't have been changed. The change itself was the problem. Your comment is getting at an important, fundamental UX principle: all conceptual change is inherently painful, and every time you ask a user to re-learn something you are always wasting their time, even if the new design is better. Sometimes a UX designer looks at two interfaces as completely separate, and thinks their job is just to pick the best one. The reality is that usually UX decisions can't be separated from the current state of the app. UX design is more like surgery, and the invasiveness of the operation has to be a consideration. Having said that, I'm mildly skeptical that the interface didn't need to be changed. The old interface for Word was extremely user-unfriendly. If you go through a few of the interviews about Ribbon[0], there was some really interesting thought put into the new approach around discoverability, and while I'm not sure I agree with all of the theory they used to justify it[1], the changes did seem to be addressing a real problem. But I think it's debatable whether or not the discoverability benefits were worth the pain, and I think there may have been better ways to roll out the changes. [0]: sorry, too lazy to hunt them down and link them [1]: I am mildly skeptical of contextual menus/toolbars. They're not wrong, they just have drawbacks that people don't always consider. Sometimes it's useful to tell people what is disabled, and to give them grounded, unchanging "landmarks" in the UX that they can use orient themselves while using a program.
  - craftinator 6y ago
    I think that choices like this come from a weird symbiotic relationship between UI designers and product managers. The UI people need to justify their jobs; if they sit on their hands all day because the UI works well, they can't make that justification. Managers don't want to "see a product stagnate" and to fix that they want a "fresh new look". The users don't enter into this relationship.
- EL_Loco 6y ago
  Of course there's an issue with change. That's the whole point. If you were a pro Emacs/Vi user that used shortcuts to do pretty much everything and it made you fast and productive, what do you think would happen if suddenly you had to use new shortcuts for all the ones you had already commited to memory?
rakoo 6y ago
Your experience reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
- osrec 6y ago
  But, the new ribbon interface was much more inconvenient. If I recall correctly, pasting data while removing duplicates in the ribbon interface was Alt+AQORT, but only Alt+XY in the old Excel (I don't remember what X and Y were, but I know it was a 2 key combo!)
  - signal11 6y ago
    Excel kept the old Alt based keyboard shortcuts, e.g. Alt D F F for Data > Filter > AutoFilter still works. If there was an alt-keyboard shortcut for paste removing duplicates, that should still work.
    - osrec 6y ago
      That's the point; the old shortcuts did not always work. Worse still, they did something totally different. For "power users", it was a horrible experience.
senorjazz 6y ago
Good old Microsoft changing the shortscuts every major release, because. Because? Because fucking why? Why do they do this.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by osrec 6y ago

sxg 6y ago

Had the ribbon interface been the original UI and the traditional menu-based interface the new UI, it sounds like you and your colleagues would have still faced the same frustrations. To me, it sounds like your issue is with change rather than the effectiveness of either type of UI.

osrec 6y ago
No, not really. Some 1 or 2 key shortcuts became 5 key shortcuts with the new ribbon UI. It was a real nightmare! Especially when the old shortcuts were also remapped to a completely different function, and your moving s so fast you don't realise where your data has gone!
- ModernMech 6y ago
  The ribbon allows you to add your most common used commands to a quick shortcut list that are only 2 keys.
danShumway 6y ago
For me, that's the point. For a program as ubiquitous as Word (and as complicated as Word), unless there were clear benefits from the new interface, it shouldn't have been changed. The change itself was the problem. Your comment is getting at an important, fundamental UX principle: all conceptual change is inherently painful, and every time you ask a user to re-learn something you are always wasting their time, even if the new design is better. Sometimes a UX designer looks at two interfaces as completely separate, and thinks their job is just to pick the best one. The reality is that usually UX decisions can't be separated from the current state of the app. UX design is more like surgery, and the invasiveness of the operation has to be a consideration. Having said that, I'm mildly skeptical that the interface didn't need to be changed. The old interface for Word was extremely user-unfriendly. If you go through a few of the interviews about Ribbon[0], there was some really interesting thought put into the new approach around discoverability, and while I'm not sure I agree with all of the theory they used to justify it[1], the changes did seem to be addressing a real problem. But I think it's debatable whether or not the discoverability benefits were worth the pain, and I think there may have been better ways to roll out the changes. [0]: sorry, too lazy to hunt them down and link them [1]: I am mildly skeptical of contextual menus/toolbars. They're not wrong, they just have drawbacks that people don't always consider. Sometimes it's useful to tell people what is disabled, and to give them grounded, unchanging "landmarks" in the UX that they can use orient themselves while using a program.
- craftinator 6y ago
  I think that choices like this come from a weird symbiotic relationship between UI designers and product managers. The UI people need to justify their jobs; if they sit on their hands all day because the UI works well, they can't make that justification. Managers don't want to "see a product stagnate" and to fix that they want a "fresh new look". The users don't enter into this relationship.
EL_Loco 6y ago
Of course there's an issue with change. That's the whole point. If you were a pro Emacs/Vi user that used shortcuts to do pretty much everything and it made you fast and productive, what do you think would happen if suddenly you had to use new shortcuts for all the ones you had already commited to memory?

rakoo 6y ago

Your experience reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/

osrec 6y ago
But, the new ribbon interface was much more inconvenient. If I recall correctly, pasting data while removing duplicates in the ribbon interface was Alt+AQORT, but only Alt+XY in the old Excel (I don't remember what X and Y were, but I know it was a 2 key combo!)
- signal11 6y ago
  Excel kept the old Alt based keyboard shortcuts, e.g. Alt D F F for Data > Filter > AutoFilter still works. If there was an alt-keyboard shortcut for paste removing duplicates, that should still work.
  - osrec 6y ago
    That's the point; the old shortcuts did not always work. Worse still, they did something totally different. For "power users", it was a horrible experience.

senorjazz 6y ago

Good old Microsoft changing the shortscuts every major release, because. Because? Because fucking why? Why do they do this.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]