MIX08 Microsoft Office 2007: The Story of the Ribbon (1 of 10)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN points to it to explain the design rationale behind the Ribbon and why the older menu and toolbar interface had accumulated too much cruft.
What it is
Jensen Harris of the Office 2007 design team tells the behind-the-scenes story of the Ribbon at MIX08. He covers early prototypes, mistakes, and the UX principles used to design and validate it.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2011 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Recommends brudgers · 2011-10 · on “User Research Gone Astray: The Case of Windows 8 Explorer”
> "It seems that essentially, every single command that customers have used or requested has been moved into a ribbon or wedged into some corner of the chrome. And many are rightfully lambasting it." Being surprised by Microsoft employing the ribbon and persistent UI elements in a redesign of any software product is nothing short utter cluelessness. The story of the ribbon: [ [this video] ]
Cites brudgers · 2014-02 · on “Ubuntu desktop moving application menus back into application windows”
I have a third theory: The theory behind Unity was a theory and not based on empirical data collected from actual users. I am not comparing the design process to focus groups etc. but to the UX design methodology described in The Story of the Ribbon. [this video]
Cites richev · 2018-09 · on “Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful”
I actually really liked it when Office 2007 introduced the ribbon, in particular when I understood the rationale behind it (which was covered at MIX08[0]). [this video]
Cites ghaff · 2020-07 · on “LibreOffice: The Next Five Years”
I never loved the ribbon and I suspect that Microsoft underestimated how disruptive the change was for a lot of people. However, I saw a presentation by one of the lead designers around the time that it was introduced and he certainly made a good case for how the older interface had accumulated way too much cruft. ADDED: Ah, this is probably it: [this video] (That said, MS Office in general had been loaded with so many functions that 1% of users used but that were absolutely essential to some 1% that it's something of a mess anyway. It's one reason I prefer the relative simplicity of GSuite these days.)