5 ms·

It's possibly one of the reasons why so many people were bent out of shape when MS introduced the adaptive ribbon shenanigans that tried to 'help' by only showi

It's possibly one of the reasons why so many people were bent out of shape when MS introduced the adaptive ribbon shenanigans that tried to 'help' by only showing the most likely options. Really knocked my ability to find stuff

staplers 3y ago
Expectation should precede consistency in order of importance. Meaning, if a new user is learning your software, how would they expect the next [flow] to go? Consistency often shapes expectations but when things go how you expect them to, you don't need to learn new mental models.
- jonshariat 3y ago
  UX designer here. I've learned that these changes are a delicate balance between allowing existing user to remain experts while improving the retention of new users. This can be accomplished by making small changes over time that break up all the new info a user has to learn and avoiding the big UI reveal which people universally hate because all that new learning is required at once and they need to get stuff done. Often times its required because as a product moves into mass market phase of its life cycle, it needs to be simple to use for lots of people, which mean it doenst work great for any specific goup. Which is why I'm really in favor of allowing customizations to the user where appropriate. It allows experts to have control over their flow and new users can enjoy the UX optimized for them.
  - staplers 3y ago
    As a fellow UX designer, i've learned the same.
mjevans 3y ago
I still hate ribbons. MS Office UI peeked around versions 97-2003 or so. Everything in a menu, actions grouped / categorized so they were easier to discover. QUICKLY accessible by underlined keyboard combinations (alt+menu letter THEN item in menu letter) and with any actions that had a direct keyboard shortcut annotated. Everything easily discoverable. Ribbons, I've no idea how the categorize what's popular or not, but 'related' things seem weaker to me, and the context switch price is much higher. Plus there's a need to hunt and kill with a mouse instead of direct with the keyboard.
- kuchenbecker 3y ago
  My first job was on a particularly verbose set if software that's hard to learn. But, everyone that uses it does so daily and quickly become experts in their workflows. Number of clicks was the #1 metric because a "pretty" UI would generally add steps and slow everyone down. Verbose UIs are hard to learn but once learned have much better end-to-end workflows with fewer steps. Simple UIs hide information behind interactive (i.e. slow) workflows and universally hated by customers.
- userbinator 3y ago
  You can still access the items in the ribbons with Alt key sequences (although I agree that they've become far less discoverable), but the full-screen(!) "file menu" abomination that they added in later versions is even more hostile and offensive.
  - Espressosaurus 3y ago
    Especially after they made everything cloud-first, making saving my damn documents to my local drive a pain in the ass.
    - TaroEld 3y ago
      F12 brings up the old "Save As" filebrowser.
- troupo 3y ago
  Ribbons for Word used to have actual research behind them. Since then it's just cargo culting. Sadly, many images are broken, but the blog series "Why The New UI" survives on web archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/tags/Why+the+New+UI_3F00_/default.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn...
  - saratogacx 3y ago
    There's an old MIX08 video where some guys from MS actually talk through the design process and everything that went into it with a lot of depth as well as looking at alternative ideas and why they didn't work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHiNeUTgGkk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHiNeUTgGkk

staplers 3y ago

Expectation should precede consistency in order of importance. Meaning, if a new user is learning your software, how would they expect the next [flow] to go? Consistency often shapes expectations but when things go how you expect them to, you don't need to learn new mental models.

jonshariat 3y ago
UX designer here. I've learned that these changes are a delicate balance between allowing existing user to remain experts while improving the retention of new users. This can be accomplished by making small changes over time that break up all the new info a user has to learn and avoiding the big UI reveal which people universally hate because all that new learning is required at once and they need to get stuff done. Often times its required because as a product moves into mass market phase of its life cycle, it needs to be simple to use for lots of people, which mean it doenst work great for any specific goup. Which is why I'm really in favor of allowing customizations to the user where appropriate. It allows experts to have control over their flow and new users can enjoy the UX optimized for them.
- staplers 3y ago
  As a fellow UX designer, i've learned the same.

mjevans 3y ago

I still hate ribbons. MS Office UI peeked around versions 97-2003 or so. Everything in a menu, actions grouped / categorized so they were easier to discover. QUICKLY accessible by underlined keyboard combinations (alt+menu letter THEN item in menu letter) and with any actions that had a direct keyboard shortcut annotated. Everything easily discoverable. Ribbons, I've no idea how the categorize what's popular or not, but 'related' things seem weaker to me, and the context switch price is much higher. Plus there's a need to hunt and kill with a mouse instead of direct with the keyboard.

kuchenbecker 3y ago
My first job was on a particularly verbose set if software that's hard to learn. But, everyone that uses it does so daily and quickly become experts in their workflows. Number of clicks was the #1 metric because a "pretty" UI would generally add steps and slow everyone down. Verbose UIs are hard to learn but once learned have much better end-to-end workflows with fewer steps. Simple UIs hide information behind interactive (i.e. slow) workflows and universally hated by customers.
userbinator 3y ago
You can still access the items in the ribbons with Alt key sequences (although I agree that they've become far less discoverable), but the full-screen(!) "file menu" abomination that they added in later versions is even more hostile and offensive.
- Espressosaurus 3y ago
  Especially after they made everything cloud-first, making saving my damn documents to my local drive a pain in the ass.
  - TaroEld 3y ago
    F12 brings up the old "Save As" filebrowser.
troupo 3y ago
Ribbons for Word used to have actual research behind them. Since then it's just cargo culting. Sadly, many images are broken, but the blog series "Why The New UI" survives on web archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/tags/Why+the+New+UI_3F00_/default.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn...
- saratogacx 3y ago
  There's an old MIX08 video where some guys from MS actually talk through the design process and everything that went into it with a lot of depth as well as looking at alternative ideas and why they didn't work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHiNeUTgGkk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHiNeUTgGkk