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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: menu/toolbar mix
From:       Celeste Lyn Paul <celeste () kde ! org>
Date:       2007-04-19 18:57:45
Message-ID: 200704191457.45922.celeste () kde ! org
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On Thursday 19 April 2007 13:18:29 Wladimir Schaefer wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, 19. April 2007 schrieb Celeste Lyn Paul:

> > The ribbon tabs require a restructuring of how the menus are organized,
> > and so familiar users have to start over again with learning the
> > application. There are longer analysis of ribbons available in many UI
> > blogs, you could probably find them in tehcnorati.  The MSOffice team put
> > a lot of hype behind this design and blogged about user research, etc.
> > that they did during development.  Regardless of their efforts, my
> > opinion is that they hit a dud. Good effort though, that is what research
> > and development is for and we've certainly learned alot from its
> > implementation.
>
> Unfortunaly, they will be putting this product to markets, and there is a
> question: would the users silently eat it down or not? I'm afraid they
> would, and they would force them self to relearn, then :
> "It looks so cool, it glints and the experts say that it is better, have
> you buy it? No?! still no?! We all have it already, you are being a loser
> if you not gonna buy it, M$ is the best..."

Well I certainly agree that the effort behind the Ribbon was market motivated.  
MS needed to sell a new office with their new operating system, and they 
needed to provide something new and exciting enough for people to upgrade 
from Office 2003.  Enter the Ribbon, even if its going to destroy their 
target user base.

Office is not an easy tool.  It is very powerful and very functional.  It 
takes a day to use it but years to master it.  Its primary market is 
long-term advanced users who have used a similar tool for many years.  
Ribbons interfere with a lot of this advanced knowledge they have of the tool 
and put them on the newbie level.  I would think that is very frustrating for 
a once adept user :)

>
> and so along..., or there is a business way:
> "We have a new software, it's damn expensive, and you all will learn how to
> work with it, or you are fired"

At the same time, if businesses knew these user problems existed, they 
probably wouldnt upgrade for fear of productivity going down.

-- 
Celeste Lyn Paul
KDE Usability Project
usability.kde.org
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