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MIX08 Microsoft Office 2007: The Story of the Ribbon

zoobean

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YouTube
  • Recommended by 2 people: 2 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2019 to 2024.
  • Made by the vendor. The company whose product it covers made or sponsored it.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

2.6K views10 years ago2 recommendations

Software designHistory and cultureDesign patternsHistory of computing

Microsoft Office team members explain the telemetry, user feedback, and design iterations that led to the creation of the Ribbon interface.

Downloaded from channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/UX09

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as a deep, data-driven case study on user interface design, telemetry, and managing feature discoverability.

nxc18on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Most software companies ignore user behavior”

There’s a lot of interesting history that I think this comment ignores. The office 2007 project was one of their more heavily feedback-driven initiatives; had they been paying attention the same way for Windows 8, it likely would have looked a lot more like Windows 10. Really interesting talk: link to this video They had really good reasons for using the ribbon, not the least of which was that people weren’t finding the features they needed. That was all driven by telemetry back before it was considered the evilest of evils. I’m amazed that you’re still bitter after 13 years. Afaict actual user preference is strongly for the ribbon, minus a very vocal minority that were bothered by the change. Office 2…

saratogacxon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)”

There's an old MIX08 video where some guys from MS actually talk through the design process and everything that went into it with a lot of depth as well as looking at alternative ideas and why they didn't work. link to this video

troupoon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Users only care about 20% of your application”

…nd the top 10 commands or so, however, the curve flattens out considerably. The percentage difference in usage between the #100 command ("Accept Change") and the #400 command ("Reset Picture") is about the same in difference between #1 and #11 ("Change Font Size") --- end quote --- The whole series is great: link and there's a presentation, too: link to this video…