Jensen Harris recently gave a talk at MiX08 titled “The Story of the Ribbon”. He told the story of the development of the new Microsoft Office 2007 user interface. There are great insights on how Microsoft solved the challenge of “menu clutter”, various methods to collect user insights and how to setup an iterative prototyping process to create a product that radically improves the users experience when working with a word processor or excel sheet.

The story of the development of the new Office UI starts with identifying the real problem with Office suits. While conventional wisdom might suggest that Office is already “Good Enough”, when asking real people how they felt about it they came up with different stories. People felt that Office is powerful, but they don’t know how to use it anymore. Jenson makes a good point:

The goal was to give back the user the feeling of mastery and to find a way so that working with Microsoft Office makes fun again. Harris stresses that interface design is one part art and one part science and he presents his insights on art and science of interface design.

Instead of generating wild ideas through brainstorming sessions, the UI team focused on two main activities: gathering user insights and building a “culture of iteration” through prototypes.

Here are some slides that give more insight how user insights were collected.

The method of planning to iterate as well as some prototypes for the UI are shown below.

So has Microsoft been successful with creating an Office Suite that gives users a feeling of mastery and which is fun to use? Here are the results of an survey of users of all skill levels after 2 months of use.

Nearly 90% of users agree that the software makes it easier to create professional looking documents and about 85% percent of user agree that the software is more fun to use.

The key lessons from his talk are:

• You can turn using a “boring” product into fun and enjoyable experience
• The key to success is not about brainstorming but about gathering user insights and iterative prototyping
• Even a mature company can create radical products by setting the focus right: on the user

You can watch the talk online or download it. Powerpoint slides are available too. Highly recommended.

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