[speed_spread]

The ribbon thing was a taste of things to come in the degradation of UI standards. Take something that works great and looks ok, replace it with something flashy that gives marketing people something to say. Break the workflow of existing users. Repeat every 10 years.

[direwolf20]

IIRC the Ribbon had real UX testing behind it. All the most common features were truly easier to access, but it was harder to find a certain feature when you needed it. In other words they optimized for the wrong thing.

My favorite was that Paste was a giant button while Cut and Copy were small because the UX research found that people paste more than they cut or copy...