Microsoft did usability studies on real people to determine the ribbon interface is better. This is back in the days when software companies cared about objectively verifiable results.
No, they did not (or if they did, they didn't publish it). If I'm wrong, please give me some links because I'd genuinely love to see it.
Microsoft did those usability studies on the versions of Office that were current before the ribbon. The ribbon followed those studies as their attempt at a solution.
A few times over the years I've tried to search for usability studies of the ribbon interface because I've never got on with it myself. I find plenty of others asking the same thing online, and everybody points them to those same earlier studies from before the ribbon, while wrongly telling them it's a study of the ribbon.
Those studies are unable to tell us whether or not MS's attempt at a solution actually fixed the problems.
I believe the ribbon was a downgrade in usability terms (but people expect it in office suites, purely because it's seen as looking more modern). And I'd love to see real intensive research to tell me whether my belief is right or wrong.
Only no, it’s not and everyone reviled it when it came out but we’ve been stuck with it ever since.
MS may have done usability studies earlier (say, when they cared about dethroning Lotus 123 and WordPerfect) but that war was long won when the ribbon UI came out, by then they only cared about milking the cash cow.
abanana|8 days ago
Microsoft did those usability studies on the versions of Office that were current before the ribbon. The ribbon followed those studies as their attempt at a solution.
A few times over the years I've tried to search for usability studies of the ribbon interface because I've never got on with it myself. I find plenty of others asking the same thing online, and everybody points them to those same earlier studies from before the ribbon, while wrongly telling them it's a study of the ribbon.
Those studies are unable to tell us whether or not MS's attempt at a solution actually fixed the problems.
I believe the ribbon was a downgrade in usability terms (but people expect it in office suites, purely because it's seen as looking more modern). And I'd love to see real intensive research to tell me whether my belief is right or wrong.
oblio|7 days ago
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/jensenh/
Unfortunately those blog entries have been destroyed because the images are no longer there.
I read all of them, they were at least 6-7 and quite detailed and I remember thinking that the thought process behind the ribbon was very solid.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/jensenh/the-...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/jensenh/ye-o...
etc - you can find all of them there plus many other related blog entries.
loloquwowndueo|8 days ago
MS may have done usability studies earlier (say, when they cared about dethroning Lotus 123 and WordPerfect) but that war was long won when the ribbon UI came out, by then they only cared about milking the cash cow.