UI Enablers - To Ribbon or not to Ribbon?
A bit of background: Microsoft introduced the "Ribbon" as a part of their Office Fluent Interface in the Office 2007 Suite. It was almost immediately declared a quantum leap in ease of use for several of the standard office applications.
Digging a bit deeper: In looking at a couple of specific applications (for example: Word & Excel) the angle was that it solved the growing "featuritis" issues associated with hundreds of menu options making it easier to access some of the more common features and a number of other issues (like predictability - which was challenged by "intelligent" menu structures that would change based on frequency of use in previous Office releases).
So, the real question surrounding this UI "Enabler" is...
Are we happy because it is a monumental ease of use step forward or because it just happens to be much better than what we had to deal with before?
Some of my observations:
-The first time you use it, you will probably hate it...it takes some time to adapt to the new way of accessing your favorite features and working with the interface.
-After the initial learning curve, most people seem to prefer the interface over the old "menu" and tons of toolbars structure. This is reinforced by research Microsoft has discussed based on early adopters.
-By addressing the "predictability" issues of previous interfaces, there is also a somewhat negative aspect to the now rigid nature of the ribbon. Sure, you can place that common command that is not 1 click away on the QAT (Quick Access Toolbar), but eventually you can end up with a maze of those icons to deal with as well. By design, there is very little customization to the ribbon layout\command buttons themselves.
-While the tabs and layout within the Ribbon evolved with usability testing...I still find myself having to click between tabs (introducing annoying extra clicks) to complete common tasks (which represent a sequence of commands).
As a tie into "Implementation", this UI "Enabler" is becoming more common for Engineering and Design Tools. I'd like to hear feedback from the community regarding likes\dislikes and perhaps specific examples of new applications or tasks that really bring out the strengths (or perhaps weaknesses) of this UI approach.
Bryan, I think you run into
Bryan,
I think you run into 2 different use cases.
1) Power users - these guys are going to hate the ribbon. The real estate is too valuable, the things they are used to doing are now broken, and they become less productive as they have to re-learn the interface. Less-frequently used features (for which these are the only users) are hidden far away instead of put on equal footing, which is what a power user would prefer.
2) Novice users - the ribbon is great for them. Easy to understand what the outcome is going to be from clicking on something, the most common questions/tasks are placed up front, and the learning curve is shortened. We have engineers learning on DeltaV 10.3 coming from other systems and they have found the engineering tools to be more intuitive. This is primarily because they have no preconceptions and no un-learning to do.
I don't see the rigidity of the ribbon as a drawback at all. On the contrary - fixed menu layouts allow you to memorize things and improve productivity. There might be a happy medium, though. If you've ever used photoshop, they have what are called workspaces. You could create a workspace for a certain user or for certain tasks, where your palettes, windows, and menus are set up a particular way. Personally I think that concept is a little "over engineered" for what we are talking about with engineering tools, but I do find value in it in Photoshop, where I might want a full-screen image to draw on, or I might want certain other windows available when I'm editing.