Ribbon-like interfaces (ala Office 2007)

[covoxer]

Menu is not the central interface element in the more classic approach - toolbar is. All the most often used controls are on the toolbars. And you can place toolbars on sides of the window which is useful for wide screens.
Office 2007 seems to have a configurable toolbar, but it's far less flexible than usually.

Here's my rough classification of the common interfaces as I see it:

1. Hotkeys. Productivity:best, Ergonomics:best, Learning:worst.
2. Toolbar. Productivity:good, Ergonomics:bad, Learning:good.
3. Menu. Productivity:worst, Ergonomics:good, Learning:bad.
4. Ribbon. Productivity:bad, Ergonomics:worst, Learning:best.

Productivity - how quickly you can get what you want.
Ergonomics - how much interface hampers your work.
Learning - how quickly you can learn to use it.

What do you think?

[Giovanni]

Covoxer, now this thread is heating up! :-)
Here is my take at your clever analysis; gotta say that a lot is down to personal taste, but your post definately is a good starting point.
For me toolbars are often too "geeky": crowd of buttons, lots of little elements with graphic icons not always easy to understand.
About menus, in my opinion they are easy to understand due to the written description of the features, but they requires some more clicks.
About ribbon productivity I think it's good because - if you leave it open - is easier to identify and shoot the right feature than a toolbar because of the big icons and good visual feedback.
Thanks Covoxer!

1. Hotkeys. Productivity:best, Ergonomics:best, Learning:worst.
2. Toolbar. Productivity:good, Ergonomics:bad, Learning:good->bad.
3. Menu. Productivity:worst, Ergonomics:good->bad, Learning:bad->good.
4. Ribbon. Productivity:bad->good, Ergonomics:worst, Learning:best.

Productivity - how quickly you can get what you want.
Ergonomics - how much interface hampers your work.
Learning - how quickly you can learn to use it.

[jinker]

however on the other hand office 2007 is, I am led to believe, a big improvement in terms of productivity

I can use word 2000 in my sleep and have no need to change, but my wife likes office 2007 a lot - uses it at work and home - she likes the ribbons too [I just asked], she is not technical if that is any indication

Not when you get the "word can't open because of an error" message everytime you try to use the programme. I've seen more revolving donuts than I care to remember. And, the only fix I can find is to change some of the registry settings. M$ should hang their heads in eternal shame.
And, don't get me started on that flippin' ribbon.

So here I am with a piece of software that costs hundreds and have had to install Open Office to get any work done. How much did that cost?....

Jinker

[handrawn]

Hummm ... and what should this tell you?

that something is wrong with Office 2007 - or that something is wrong with your installation?

[covoxer]

1. Hotkeys. Productivity:best, Ergonomics:best, Learning:worst.
2. Toolbar. Productivity:good, Ergonomics:bad, Learning:good->bad.
3. Menu. Productivity:worst, Ergonomics:good->bad, Learning:bad->good.
4. Ribbon. Productivity:bad->good, Ergonomics:worst, Learning:best.

Yes, it may be personal of course. So I believe that for you menu learning is easier than toolbars.
But I don't agree with other changes:
- Menu ergonomics must be higher than toolbar because it takes less space on the screen (read my definition of ergnomics in this context).
- Toolbar productivity is higher than ribbon because it requires less clicks and less mouse movements for most common tasks. You don't feel it because you had not mastered toolbars. So if you set toolbars learning to "bad" you should not alter ribbon productivity the way you did.

Agree?

[Giovanni]

Mmmh, mmmh... oh my God, yes, I agree!

Ehrm... to balance, would it help me if I'd say that I use OpenOffice in my home PC?

Eheheh, this is one of the times I feel like I would meet personally some people known over the net... but then suddenly the world comes back to its real huge dimensions...

[covoxer]

Yes. As you can see form my comparison, every interface has it's strength. Hotkeys are ultimately effective but almost impossible to master, so may be a best choice for hard core professional users.
Ribbon is opposite - easy to use from the start but very ineffective. Obvious choice for novice and amateurs.
Menus and toolbars complement each other and are generally balanced solution with acceptable effectiveness and learning curve. This makes them acceptable, though not the best, solution for both professionals and novices. Also it's the best choice for mediocre users who want to optimize their work flow but can't afford mastering hotkeys.
With Office 2007 there are both Hotkeys and Ribbon but no toolbars/menus which makes it harder to achieve productivity on the level with previous version. Although it's easier to use for novices, albeit with lower productivity.

That's how I see it. Though generally, interface is a very subjective thing so there are a lot of exceptions form any rule one may try to figure out.

[Xhris]

The ribbon interface is a very clever idea in principle. It efficiently stores lots of common commands in an efficient way; storing the equivalent commands using traditional toolbars would consume a lot of screen real estate. In fact, my workspace in Word has increased as a result.

Objectively, it is also measurably much quicker for me to achieve many tasks now; fewer clicks are required to get some of my common actions done. The ribbon interface is measurably more efficient once mastered.

The only criticisms I've come across since its release have been incredibly weak and unconvincing, and rely on purely subjective opinions rather than on some valid objective reasoning. The most common gripes lie along the lines of being incapable of finding commands and the buttons look too big etc., and this is before the traditional anti-MS-reflex so commonly seen. The buttons aren’t too big for me and as I said take up less space overall than the equivalent toolbars I used commonly. When I first saw the ribbon, I knew it was going to take some adjusting and re-learning, but I revelled in the challenge rather than mindlessly in the feeling of discomfort that change brought. Within an hour, I was using it perfectly well and had familiarised myself with where common buttons were. As I said, my productivity in this Office version has increased measurably directly because of the Ribbon. I've never really understood the strong luddite-like behaviour of rejecting something because it’s different and requires the tiny shred of effort to get used to. This behaviour is visible all the time; remember the time Xara introduced a really useful menu for right-clicking on the colour line? Talk about kicking a luddite’s nest, I mean hornet’s nest. Yet in just 5 minutes, I got used to it and now prefer it as I use a lot of the menu commands quite frequently and they save time instead of flicking through menus to achieve the same thing, and shift-clicking does the exact same thing as the old-right clicking, so no loss of functionality occurred.

Personally, I'm all for change as long as there's no loss in functionality and there are objective, measurably-good reasons for doing so, and the ribbon qualifies. I’d love to see it or something equivalently intelligent in Xara at some point in the future; Xara did model the CorelXara interface on the MS Office suite I remember hearing from one of their older videos.

I often find when something new comes along and change is required, people fall into one of four categories; specifically for this ribbon (disclaimer alarm bells: don’t choose to take personal offence to this if you identify with any category, none is intended—this is just an observation):

1.The ignorant: I don’t know what the change is; therefore I'm not qualified to make a comment (although this usually doesn’t stop me).

2.The anti-MS-reflex types: I refuse to even consider whether it’s an innovative idea; it’s Microsoft, and therefore as a MS racist, I won’t give it a second look and will badmouth it, and also automatically accuse those who don’t badmouth it of being MS fanboys. I will seek out and embellish any negative comment made about it—no matter how trivial.

3.The superficialists: I don’t like it because <insert superficial subjective attribute that doesn’t affect productivity or suggest I've fully appreciated the goal in question> e.g. its look, or it’s too much trouble to spend 5 minutes re-learning for the better, or its style of clothes, or ethnic group, or its skin colour etc. to lean toward more serious prejudices.

4.The objective respectables: I don’t like X because in the LONG term there is the following loss in functionality, and the following measurable reduction in productivity. To add balance, here are some other well thought out objective, measurable, constructive comments both for and against…

I only have respect for 4, and would have a conversation with them. Possibly 1 as well to help them out. 99% of those who I've heard comment on the ribbon over the years—in all places—fit into categories 2 and 3; I'm not sure how surprising that is really.

[covoxer]

Xhris, objectively ribbon is less productive than toolbars. It requires more clicks+mouse movements. For example, if you're now on the wrong tab, you have to click to change it, than move mouse, sometimes half the screen to click the option. Toolbars have advantage of visualizing all options at the same time, so you always click once.

As to the area taken. I see you point that if you put all the functions on the tool bars they will grow to the size larger than ribbon on screen, since ribbon is tabbed. But, first of all, no one uses all the functions often, so correctly customizing toolbars you can balance the ergonomics and performance. Secondly, you can place them on sides of the window as well as on top and bottom which, again, correctly utilized, can result in effective use of the screen area.

From what you say about increase of your productivity with ribbon I'm getting impression that you had not mastered toolbars before, so your performance was suboptimal until you started using ribbon which is much easier to learn.

[Xhris]

It's possible my use of toolbars is sub-optimal, but that would apply to Xara too, and there's no evidence of sub optimal Xara use, so I'm probably using toolbars perfectly well. In fact how could you really not?

I use the mouse wheel to change tabs in the ribbon and it's quick. Each group on a tab in the ribbon is the equivalent to a toolbar. Toolbars (except ones customised for a user's common functions) generate clutter. Xara are aware of this which is why their toolbars are minimal and contain only the very common features. It's also a reason why seeing a ribbon-like interface in Xara is unlikely in anything but the long term.

One suggestion for improvement to a ribbon interface (Word's anyway) would be to have a custom tab in which people could arrange copies of buttons and groups as they saw fit. It would therefore satisfy space requirements and address the criticism of the lack of ability to customise it.