One of the most striking new features of the Office 2007 core applications is the new User Interface. Known as "the ribbon" (although it's much more than just the ribbon component), this new UI dramatically simplifies the user experience while exposing new and pre-existing functionality.
I had the chance last week to sit down with Jensen Harris, who is a Lead Program Manager on the Office User Experience team. Many of you may know Jensen from his public blog, which is widely regarded as THE PLACE to go for information about the new Office UI.
In Part 1 of this prodcast, Jensen talks about how the Office applications have evolved over the past twenty years and how they've outgrown the menu/toolbar based UI of the past. He highlights how the products have grown in functionality and how that growth has made it challenging to keep the user interface easy to use. Jensen also shed some light on how Microsoft has spent years studying how people work with Microsoft Office and how we've collected massive amounts of data on WHAT features are used and HOW they are used. As a result, we can now design a UI that makes popular features more prominant and lesser-known features easier to discover and use.
Click here to Play Audio. (35.33)
WMA Version
MP3 Version
For more information about the new Office UI, visit Jensen's blog.