The Importance of The Familiar

Posted on November 5, 2008 by LJ

Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Photo by paul_danger_williamsI am by no means a technology dummy, or one afraid to learn new ways of doing things. But I realized that in order to learn new things, the fastest way is to relate them to something I already know.

The Importance of the Familiar

One of the best marketing strategies for any new device is to make it similar to something already in use. This speeds people along the learning path, and reduces the frustration.

The same holds with software. There should always be a path for someone to learn the new skills quickly and easily. Microsoft did this with the first versions of Word, where it allowed you to use WordPerfect key commands to access features.

Office 2007 and The Non-Existent Upgrade Path

In the last six months, I installed Office 2007. Twice. I needed it to access files that were coming from another office where 2007 was the standard. In both cases, I uninstalled Office 2007 within an hour of installing it.

Why?

Because every program and operating system from Windows from 3.0 to present day runs on menus. You could count on print being under the file menu, along with exit. Microsoft actually wrote a big document on software standards so that independent developers could follow these conventions.

But with Office 2007′s Word and Excel, they did away following the conventions. The top “menu bar” shifts to “guess” what might be needed based on what you are doing. And there is no built-in way to put on old-fashioned menus to speed the transition. Sure, I could buy an add on. But when I wanted to do something quickly, I was left staring in consternation, trying to guess where things are hidden.

I don’t want the software to think for me. I want it to respond to what I do in a direct way.

So in Microsoft’s quest to make software more user-friendly, they actually made it user-hostile. But given the debacle with Vista (sorry, I agree with the Mac ads on this one, where Microsoft is putting more money toward publicity than actually fixing the problems), I would have thought they would have been cautious not to have another user nightmare on their hands.

Guess not.

Photo by paul_danger_williams

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Comments (2)

 

  1. Angi Lundy says:
    November 5, 2008 at 2:37 pm

    Hi There – Part of my job is working with folks who are trying to work with Office product, so I feel your pain – wanted to give you the link to this cool search command add-in for Office 2007, basically it lets you quickly and easily search for any Office 2003 command that may not be easy to find with the Office 2007 ribbon. It’s been a lifesaver for some of the users I work with: http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands/Pages/default.aspx … and it’s free =)

  2. Shabaab Kamal says:
    November 6, 2008 at 8:32 am

    I agree that it’s a shame that Microsoft seemed to take no pains to make the transition to Office 07 any easier, but after spending time with it I’m finding that I like the Ribbon a lot more than old-school menus. Yes, at first it was a bit tougher for me to find options that I had previously memorized the locations of, but after writing up a few docs in Word and making two PowerPoints, I’ve found that the Ribbon makes Microsoft Office a significantly more powerful app suite. There are many more options that I can see and now can use that previously either intimidated me or I didn’t even notice.

    I think you should give Office 07 another chance. It’s a bit tough to get into, but in the end it makes Office a lot more useful, not only because of the Ribbon but because of many other features (like the instant preview or better right-click menus). It’ll eventually become the standard, anyway (MS is implementing the Ribbon is more of its apps in Windows 7, and is encouraging third party developers to use it, as well).

    If you still find that you don’t like it, though, you should consider installing the Office 2007 compatibility pack. It lets you read the new Open XML formats in earlier versions of office, so you don’t have to install Office 2007 over and over. =P

    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en