Microsoft Ribbon....general concensus?

httpete

So what is the general consensus on using the Ribbon in a Windows application user interface? I like it myself but before I put it in one of my own applications I would like to know do other people like, hate it, or are indifferent to it.

Malice

There's not really much point asking developers what they think of it. Given that devs are generally far more adept at using computers than the average person at whom the ribbon is aimed, you're probably just going to get a chorus of dislike.

For the record I don't like it .

httpete

Malice wrote: »

There's not really much point asking developers what they think of it. Given that devs are generally far more adept at using computers than the average person at whom the ribbon is aimed, you're probably just going to get a chorus of dislike.

For the record I don't like it .

Hehe, only developers here alright but maybe some of them have an idea of how the Ribbon has gone down with the general public.

Colonel Panic

A lot of our users find them confusing but the market we develop for isnt known for being tech savvy. They seem to be here to stay though, with each version of Windows introducing a ribbon for yet another component.

yenoah

In terms of usability and interaction design, the ribbon fails. It fails basic theory such as Normans heuristics, Fitz law etc. In terms of every day use and common sense, it also fails.

I have been forcing myself to use the MS Office Ribbons for four years now. I still cannot navigate my applications properly and sometime spend 5 minutes trying to figure out where or how to do something before resorting to google over the MS help system.

For every reason in the book, ribbons are a bad idea!

conor.hogan.2

It may be bad but people are used to it, which is a big deal.

fenris

its rubbish, I see users who are almost tech illiterate trying to memorise hotkeys rather than faffing about throught all the dross on the ribbon

yenoah

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

It may be bad but people are used to it, which is a big deal.

As a usability person, I have to report that people are "using" it, but almost no one is "used" to it. People are using it because they more or less have to.

fenris

it was change for changes sake, prob a pet project of some PHBs idiot child. you lose screen real estate for no goain in usability, I have seen people prefering to struggle on with old laptops rather than get a new one as there will be the "new" ribon version of office onboard.

httpete

yenoah wrote: »

As a usability person, I have to report that people are "using" it, but almost no one is "used" to it. People are using it because they more or less have to.

Yea from what Ive read it seems alot of people are either indifferent to it or they really dislike it. Doesnt seem to be many people who love it.

fenris wrote: »

it was change for changes sake, prob a pet project of some PHBs idiot child. you lose screen real estate for no goain in usability, I have seen people prefering to struggle on with old laptops rather than get a new one as there will be the "new" ribon version of office onboard.

What I like about the Ribbon is that all the command buttons come with a text description so you know what everything does at a glance. I remember before the Ribbon you would would have toolbars jammed with little buttons with no text description so you didnt know what they did (without hovering over them). So you would end up just using the commands from the dropdown menus from the menubar.

I like Microsoft's Network Monitor application's UI, text descriptons beside all the commands without a big eyesore ribbon. I think this might be the route I take.

Malice

fenris wrote: »

its rubbish, I see users who are almost tech illiterate trying to memorise hotkeys rather than faffing about throught all the dross on the ribbon

I might be misunderstanding your point but isn't memorising hotkeys a good idea?

fenris

Hotkeys are great when you know what you are at, but the fact that even casual users feel forced to use them because the primary GUI is so badly borked as to be practically unusable. When you hear comments like "this reminds me of Wordperfect, except this is slower and harder to use" (wordperfect from the pre-mouse era), you get the message that all is not good!

The main achievement of the ribbon is that people don't seem to get used to it, they just get increasingly irritated by it, ribbon is the rebecca black of the GUI world!

stevenmu

It looks like I'm very much in the minority here, but I love the ribbon. And I think it's a massive improvement on the old menu/toolbar systems.

In my experience, most of the people I've come across who didn't like it, sisn't like it simply because they don't like change. They knew where the tools they needed were in Office, and while for the most part they understood very little of what they were doing, they had memorised a series of clicks and button presses that would do what they want. Suddenly that had changed and they didn't want to memorise a new set of clicks and button presses.

But, with a little encouragement to explore the ribbon and try it out, I've found most people take to it quite well. It's far more intuitive to use, and much easier to discover new features and functionality. People using it understand what they're doing much better, they look for options/features in areas/groups dedicated to related funtionality, rather than memorising to pick the 3rd one, then the 2nd one, then the 4th one. It's far quicker to use, it's much easier to find what you want, and with the most commonly used items being larger and to the left. It's vastly superior for giving context sensitive options. In particular for a new application which people are not used to, it's much much easier to discover what's available, compared to having to search through layers of hierarchical menus.

I can't think of a single way in which menu/toolbars were better. Tbh I suspect even techies who don't like it feel that way out of a resistance to change.

In terms of usability and interaction design, the ribbon fails. It fails basic theory such as Normans heuristics, Fitz law etc. In terms of every day use and common sense, it also fails.

I'd be interested to hear specific ways you think it fails those principles?

yenoah

Assuming you are familiar with usability theory, I'll recount some real world experiences that I have encountered

Recognition rather than recall
A lecturer of mine spent 10 minutes trying to figure out where the print setup dialog had gone in Word. Envoking the above principle and common sense, most people assume its under the view tab. I think they have improved this in the 2010 version.

Flexibility and efficiency of use
I still cant figure how to view/filter by "unread" mail in Outlook

Recognition rather than recall
I did google how to view/filter by "unread" mail in Outlook but have since forgotten and the ribbon does not help me remember

efficiency of use
Incredible amount of screen real estate taken by ribbons, especially on poor productibvity screen resolutions such as many 15" laptops these days

Fittz law
(basically measures the time taken to get a pointer from A to a target given factors such as distance, size of target etc)
Look at the format icons under Home tab in word

I have read a few papers that list better examples, Im just thinking on the hoof here.

fenris

stevenmu wrote: »

But, with a little encouragement to explore the ribbon and try it out, I've found most people take to it quite well. It's far more intuitive to use, and much easier to discover new features and functionality. People using it understand what they're doing much better, they look for options/features in areas/groups dedicated to related funtionality, rather than memorising to pick the 3rd one, then the 2nd one, then the 4th one. It's far quicker to use, it's much easier to find what you want, and with the most commonly used items being larger and to the left. It's vastly superior for giving context sensitive options. In particular for a new application which people are not used to, it's much much easier to discover what's available, compared to having to search through layers of hierarchical menus.

lol - sounds like you have put a bit of ego on the deployment of a ribbon interface and need validation of the decision or are a very new MS employee.

People use systems to do a job not for the love the system, GUIs are tools no more no less.
What ribbon has done is take a tool that fulfilled its function well in terms of enabling people to carry out their tasks and replaced it with a tool that has to be circumvented in order to approach the effectiveness and efficiency of the previous tool.
It is like taking away a soup spoon and giving back a fisher price fork all the pointy bits rounded off. Yes you can still drink your soup, it just takes longer and is increasingly irritating as you know a spoon exists and the time spent messing could be better spent doing something productive.

Ribbon was simply MS attempt to avoid the Morris Minor effect on a mature product, driving "upgrades" and training.

"Ribbon Rage" seems to be most prevalant among laptop excel users where the number of clicks needed for even basic common tasks is excessive and the screen clutter is frustrating to say the least.

The fact that there is a thriving market in addons to fix the MS office interface is very telling.

p

Man - there's a lot of rubbish being spoken about on this thread. To the original poster, the Ribbon is by and large a good UI model. It's great for Office, and apps that are very large and complex with a lot of tasks. What it's not good for is smaller apps with less tasks. An example of a a dubious use of the Ribbon is in the version of Wordpad that shipped with Windows 7. So, it's not a catchall solution by any means.

Most people who complain about the Ribbon a) have no clue what designing software the size of MS Office is like and b) do not understand the constraints and unique problems that microsoft were trying to solve.

For anyone who's interested in actually reading about the rationale behind te Ribbon, read this series of articles.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/tags/why+the+new+ui_3f00_/default.aspx

yenoah wrote: »

In terms of usability and interaction design, the ribbon fails. It fails basic theory such as Normans heuristics, Fitz law etc. In terms of every day use and common sense, it also fails.

To be honest, it's hard for me to take your opinion seriously, when you don't even know how to spell Fitts's law correctly. The Ribbon doesn't fail those heuristics at all. The Ribbon is far from perfect, but most designers say it's a good solution to an incredibly difficult problem.

fenris wrote: »

it was change for changes sake, prob a pet project of some PHBs idiot child. you lose screen real estate for no goain in usability, I have seen people prefering to struggle on with old laptops rather than get a new one as there will be the "new" ribon version of office onboard.

You don't lose much screen real estate at all. This is a myth:

fenris wrote: »

The fact that there is a thriving market in addons to fix the MS office interface is very telling.

That doesn't really tell us anything. Less than 5% of users change any settings in office at all - so while there may be a market for it, it's small in terms of overall usage of the product.

stevenmu

fenris wrote: »

lol - sounds like you have put a bit of ego on the deployment of a ribbon interface and need validation of the decision or are a very new MS employee.

Lol, neither. I don't work for MS, and I've only used the ribbon in a project once that I can think of. That was an Office 2007 extension project so was destined to use the ribbon from the start so no need to justify it, though I do think the ribbon worked better than toolbars would have.

"Ribbon Rage" seems to be most prevalant among laptop excel users where the number of clicks needed for even basic common tasks is excessive and the screen clutter is frustrating to say the least.

If it's minimised down it takes up pretty much the same amount of screen space as a standard menu (and less than menu + toolbars).

stevenmu

yenoah wrote: »

Assuming you are familiar with usability theory, I'll recount some real world experiences that I have encountered

Recognition rather than recall
A lecturer of mine spent 10 minutes trying to figure out where the print setup dialog had gone in Word. Envoking the above principle and common sense, most people assume its under the view tab. I think they have improved this in the 2010 version.

Flexibility and efficiency of use
I still cant figure how to view/filter by "unread" mail in Outlook

Recognition rather than recall
I did google how to view/filter by "unread" mail in Outlook but have since forgotten and the ribbon does not help me remember

efficiency of use
Incredible amount of screen real estate taken by ribbons, especially on poor productibvity screen resolutions such as many 15" laptops these days

Fittz law
(basically measures the time taken to get a pointer from A to a target given factors such as distance, size of target etc)
Look at the format icons under Home tab in word

I have read a few papers that list better examples, Im just thinking on the hoof here.

I do know a little about usability theory at a basic level, I wouldn't be an expert by any means. But the stuff I do know is partyly why I like the ribbon, I think it looks good, and follows good usability guidelines.

The print functionality was a bit of a disaster by MS, it has 'improved' in 2010, it's now back under "File" which is where people 'remember' it to be. The print options should (IMHO) be available directly on the ribbon, either under a print tab, or prominently on the home tab. It's easily possible to edit the ribbon and make the print functionality more prominent. It could be argued that you shouldn't need to customise the ribbon, but that's getting into arguing more about what specific items are included on the ribbon rather than how good a UI it is. I would point out that they could just as easily put Print in a stupid place with menus and toolbars, and in fact everyone knew it was under "File" through recollection not recognition. As a UI paradigm I'd argue that the ribbon works better, in particular for finding things through recognition rather than recollection. Just they put Print in a stupid place.

The same kind of applies to the unread mail in outlook, it's incorporated into the search functionality (which IMO makes sense, you want to search for all unread mails). The problem is that the search tab is context sensitive only appearing when you click into the search box. Really something as important as search should be visible all of the time (and if it was I'd bet you'd find those unread mails in no time ). Again I think that's a poor decision on what was included by default on the ribbon, rather than a weakness of the ribbon as a paradigm.

The screen real estate issue can be overcome by minimising the ribbon. In general I don't like doing this, it's a backward step IMO making it more old style menu like, but it's handy on smaller screens like laptops/netbooks etc.

And I think Fittz law (Fitts's law?) is an area where the ribbon as a paradigm really shines. First of all it takes all the functionality out from behind drop down menus, which require lots of click-move-click etc, and how often have you tried to pull out a submenu only to click on the wrong one. Compared to standard toolbars I think the ribbon wins out hugely. The ribbon buttons can be different sizes, allowing the most important commonly used funtionality to be large easy to hit buttons. Buttons (and other controls such as drop downs) can be arranged and stacked in any number of different ways. The formatting controls in Word for example put the font, size, bold/italic, colour and effects controls all within a very small area. It's pretty common to select some text, then change the font, size, strenght and colour all in one and now they're arranged in a neat little box all next to each other. It could be argued that they should all be big prominent buttons, and they can be with customisation, but that's really a specific content choice, IMO the ribbon as a paradigm is still sound.

BostonB

p wrote: »

... Ribbon is by and large a good UI model. It's great for Office, and apps that are very large and complex with a lot of tasks. What it's not good for is smaller apps with less tasks. ...



That doesn't really tell us anything. Less than 5% of users change any settings in office at all ....

Isn't that the problem right there. Most users use very little of Office. So the ribbon is therefore only optimal for 5% of users.

I'm not really a fan off the ribbon, especially not in 2007 and in 2010 they seem to have reverted back to more of the older UI, while not abandoning the ribbon, its much less uncompromising than the one in 2007. The've replaced the Orb with a good old file menu. If that's not an proof of failure I dunno what is. 2010 is also better because it has better features. So I think the idea that the ribbon is better, is a bit misleading. Its not better. Its been redesigned, much closer to a tradition menu system.

While I'm a developer, and have done large VBA/GUI projects in the past, in general I don't use office that much, I'd only use about 5% of the office functionality, even if I'm aware of much more of it. I can find things much better in 2010 than 2007. When even after a few years using it, I was still hunting for features. I'm more efficient in office 2010 than 2007, but that's mainly because it has better features.

In my experience none of these menu systems are as efficient as an old text based system on a mainframe or vax etc. Once you learn the short-cut keys you fly. Menus slow you down, as does any menu that requires a mouse. Graphical Menu based systems are quicker for inexperienced uses. But only as they learn. Once past that stage they are slower. It depends on the task though. Some elements like tables, grids, margains etc. are visual. So a visual control is optimal. But like wise some things aren't. They don't need a graphical based control/interface.

The other thing is, the new UI (2007 & 2010) is slower compared to the older ones. Even on a fast machine.

p

BostonB wrote: »

Isn't that the problem right there. Most users use very little of Office. So the ribbon is therefore only optimal for 5% of users.

Nope. The Ribbon is a solution to that problem. Do you remember the auto hiding menus they had before? They were just messy. The core concept of the Ribbon is that the tabs are activity centric and contextual, so you only use what's relevant at the time. If you never use references, then you never see those options at all. Previously, options for references were contained in multiple places throughout the UI, so the signal vs noise ratio is too high.


There's a good discussion this general UX concept here:
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2006/12/the-complexity-of-simplicity.php

fenris

p wrote: »

Most people who complain about the Ribbon a) have no clue what designing software the size of MS Office is like and b) do not understand the constraints and unique problems that microsoft were trying to solve.

Now there is the heart of the problem, most people who complain about ribbon are the people who have to use it on a daily basis in order to do their work.

They couldn't give a monkeys about designing software because that is not their concern, they just need to be able to use the product of that design as a tool to enable their organisation to generate revenue.

As for "the constraints and unique problems that MS have" the understanding is very clear, old product mature but doing the job well, need to drive revenue with some USP that unfortunately breaks the functionality but fortunately can be driven through using the licensing / update regime as most users are not in a position to vote with their feet.

Ribbon is a fad among developers and marketing folk that is increasingly becomming a negative selling point due to the mishandling of the MS office roadmap it is a byword for poor design and ill conceived change.

The measure of a tools value is how well it does its job.

fenris

p wrote: »

You don't lose much screen real estate at all. This is a myth:

The difference is in the value and relevance of what is on the screen along with the ease of access via hotkeys with a reminder of what that key is to start the sequence.

Look at your example, the paste button is six times the size of the cut/ copy icons - does that mean I get six times better pasting or is it just a waste of space that looks "pretty", also you have an additional irrelevant toolbar added in at the bottom on the left - to fill up some space/ plug hole in a weak arguement?

Count the functions that you have direct access to on the left and right and honestly tell me how you really justify that to a user?

Many users customise a toolbar to allow easy access to their most frequently used functions

BostonB

p wrote: »

Nope. The Ribbon is a solution to that problem. Do you remember the auto hiding menus they had before? They were just messy. The core concept of the Ribbon is that the tabs are activity centric and contextual, so you only use what's relevant at the time. If you never use references, then you never see those options at all. Previously, options for references were contained in multiple places throughout the UI, so the signal vs noise ratio is too high....

Can't agree. That solves a problem that doesn't exist. The hidden menus were always a joke, turning that off was the first thing to do. Besides which this improvement does the same thing. You can't click on things you can't find, and you can't find them if they don't appear unless you do a certain thing.

As a GUI improvement that's meant to bring people to features they are not aware of, its completely flawed. As people won't see those features to be aware of them.

For me the idea of bits of the interface disappearing and appearing, is very odd. Sure have contextual information and reduce on screen clutter but don't hide features. That makes no sense.

Also they don't even follow their own philosophy on this. Quite often the most frequently used buttons are some of the smallest on screen rather than the largest on screen. While some obscure feature, is one of the biggest button.

Office feels like much of Microsoft software. Thousands of developers not all on the same same page when it comes to GUI or indeed, the objective of the software. They seem to want to add features add hoc, and using blunderbuss.

In short MS lacks focus, and its reflected in their software.

stevenmu

Well speaking for myself, I've found it much easier to discover the functionality in Office using the ribbon than I have searching through drop down menus and tiny iconed toolbars. And I've found it to be much more usable than the same.

It's certainly not perfect, but what's the better option? I really don't think that hierarchical drop down menu's with 3 or 4 layers, and undescriptive toolstrips are.

yenoah

I can only apologise for my mispelling of Fittz law. I should be shot. Again thinking on the hoof has been my downfall. I am getting my coat as we speak.:cool:

In all seriousness, I'm enjoying this thread. I think one or two people have hit on the key point. We aren't really the people to be appraising the ribbon. It is best done by end users. Surveys have been done, I've conducted a few myself on this very control. In general, I can report that results were poor. I dont have access to figures anymore, just memory but I'm sure you can look up similar usability surveys online.

But I mispelled the word Fytz. I need to go!:D

stevenmu

yenoah wrote: »

I can only apologise for my mispelling of Fittz law. I should be shot. Again thinking on the hoof has been my downfall. I am getting my coat as we speak.:cool:

In all seriousness, I'm enjoying this thread. I think one or two people have hit on the key point. We aren't really the people to be appraising the ribbon. It is best done by end users. Surveys have been done, I've conducted a few myself on this very control. In general, I can report that results were poor. I dont have access to figures anymore, just memory but I'm sure you can look up similar usability surveys online.

But I mispelled the word Fytz. I need to go!:D

Well you know what they say, if you can't win an argument with logic and reason, pick on their spelling and grammer

It's a good discussion though, UX is something often overlooked by developers, it's probably impossible to get perfect, but talking/arguing about the pros and cons of different systems can at least help us all.

Oh and for people talking about shortcut keys, look at what happens in the ribbon with a single press of the Alt key (in 2010 at least, don't have 2007 here to check but I think it was similar).

BostonB

yenoah wrote: »

I can only apologise for my mispelling of Fittz law. I should be shot....

In fairness you couldn't find the spell checker.

p

I agree, good discussion too.

I'm not going to reply to individual comments here, because to be honest, a lot of it seems to be passionate, but personal opinion or bias. However, I'd be very happy to continue a discussion with someone who has read about the rationale and facts behind the Ribbon as posted earlier: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/tags/why+the+new+ui_3f00_/default.aspx
Here's a video if you prefer watching to reading: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx


Even if you don't agree with it all, it's fascinating reading for anyone interested in usability and UI design, and there's quite a few uncomfortable truths in there, and how you deal with them it's what's of real interest to me anyway.

BostonB

In my experience developers usually make poor UI designers. Mainly because their mindset is very different to most users or even someone interested in efficiency in workflow or information topology.

BostonB

On a basic level I don't see how you can do usability testing on a product of this scale and produce a result where some of the most commonly used buttons are tiny and other less commonly used are huge. Or indeed where they say they've studies to prove something works, then they drop that feature/design in a later version. To me it suggests there something wrong with their testing, or they didn't do it in the first place.

yenoah

p wrote: »

I agree, good discussion too.

I'm not going to reply to individual comments here, because to be honest, a lot of it seems to be passionate, but personal opinion or bias. However, I'd be very happy to continue a discussion with someone who has read about the rationale and facts behind the Ribbon as posted earlier: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/tags/why+the+new+ui_3f00_/default.aspx
Here's a video if you prefer watching to reading: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx


Even if you don't agree with it all, it's fascinating reading for anyone interested in usability and UI design, and there's quite a few uncomfortable truths in there, and how you deal with them it's what's of real interest to me anyway.

Yea Ive seen that video before. I'm convinced that is Michael Stipe!