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Aug19Written by:Martin
19.08.2008 07:04  Yesterday evening a few colleagues and I went to a pub for some beer  . We couldn’t completely keep our work out  and for a few minutes had a discussion about the current Microsoft Office user interface. One colleague mentioned that he needed about an hour including reading the online help to find the function to paste something from the clipboard into Word as plain text, i.e. to get rid of the formatting. First I thought he was kidding me, but he was serious. If you start Word, the ribbon looks like this: Yesterday evening a few colleagues and I went to a pub for some beer . We couldn’t completely keep our work out and for a few minutes had a discussion about the current Microsoft Office user interface. One colleague mentioned that he needed about an hour including reading the online help to find the function to paste something from the clipboard into Word as plain text, i.e. to get rid of the formatting. First I thought he was kidding me, but he was serious. If you start Word, the ribbon looks like this: 
The paste button is prominently positioned at the top left. If you move the mouse over it, you see that it’s not one, but two buttons. If you keep the mouse a little bit, you’ll additionally get a tooltip: 
Why is it difficult for some people to recognize that? Is it just that they are used two the old interface? Yes, there is no “Paste Special…” menu entry in an “Edit” menu anymore. But are the visual clues like the small black arrow below “Paste” or the button highlights too subtle? I don’t know. Maybe he just had a bad day… And I’m glad that my job does not require much user interface design What’s your opinion? Please leave a comment. Tags: 7 comment(s) so far...
Re: Paste I think the problem is that if you are trained by Microsoft for nearly 20 years to search for what you are looking within the menu which comes with really small words instead of complete sentences you do not expact something usefull within the describing text.
For new user I guess the new interface is just fine, but I the older semesters it's a different story. By tom.wellige on
19.08.2008 07:58
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Re: Paste Maybe. However, if you find the tooltip, you already won. But it looks like it's difficult for some to even recognize that the paste button is in fact two buttons. By Martin on
19.08.2008 09:36
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Re: Paste I think the problem is that if you are trained by Microsoft for nearly 20 years to search for what you are looking within the menu which comes with really small words instead of complete sentences you do not expact something usefull within the describing text.
For new user I guess the new interface is just fine, but I the older semesters it's a different story. By tom.wellige on
19.08.2008 13:09
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Re: Paste [Off topic]
I think Tom in the end started learning what he can do with the Paste function and he now used it to copy-paste his own reaction... Let's hope he stops playing around with it :)
[On topic]
For more than a year I am using the new Office version. And to be honest... I still lose a lot of time by searching around for functionality which I formerly found just in a kind of natural way... By Wilco.Steenbergen on
19.08.2008 19:17
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Re: Paste Yes the new design is really "special". But if you take some time and give it a chance, it is the best toolbar concept I ever seen. You have many features just one mouse click away, where you have to search 1000 submenus in the past... By 3imedia-schmidt on
19.08.2008 21:44
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Re: Paste Ok, I was the person who can't find the function :-) . I use a german office version. In the german office version "paste" and "insert" are translated to the same german word "Einfügen". So you have an own main menu entry for "Einfügen" and under this entry I searched for "Paste as" ("Inhalt Einfügen" in german). By Marcus.Mucks on
20.08.2008 13:44
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Re: Paste BTW, I intentionally didn't mention any names, because this is not about compromising colleagues, but about Office usability.
I didn't know that he used a German language Office version. This case impressively shows that even a correct localization can negatively affect usability. I learned something new today. By Martin on
20.08.2008 14:38
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