Tuesday, June 20, 2006

MS Office 2007 Interface Video -- Nice Intro to UI

In addition to marketing the product and preparing users for what to expect, Microsoft's Office 2007 User Interface Intro Video does a nice job explaining the rationale behind their design decisions -- most of which seem sound. The video provides some insight into the mismatch between user goals and the old menu-driven interface and includes a good critique of the non-WYSIWYG aspect of dialog boxes (conceptual overview at 1:15 and example provided at 4:42 and other times throughout). Gizmodo bashes the interface as a ripoff of Mac's Aqua, but I don't know enough about Aqua to comment. What I like best about the video is that it provides a nice example of what "user experience" people do and how they think. It might be useful in my tech writing classes. [previous post]

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