There are 2 features Microsoft introduced with it's recent Office 2007 (Windows) and Office 2008 (Mac OS) releases that directly aimed at the heart of our interests and business needs, which are of course personal, but representative for 2 classes of user needs in general:
- Usability of an application with numerous features: Solved by #1 The Ribbon and
- Reusability and redesignability of logically structured content: Solved by #2 SmartArt Graphics
#1: The Ribbon
From a mere theoretical point of view, I am a big fan of the ribbon approach. mere theoretical, as for us old-school Office users who grew up with versions 1 to 11, it is more an obstacle than an advantage. We are used to important commands buried levels deep into menu hierarchies with labels that are not self-explaining in the first place - but we know exactly where they are. At least the frequently used commands. The ribbon overcomes that old paradigm of the File-Edit-View menus and places up-left what is important in a certain context: Write commands for Word, essential Spreadsheet commands for Excel and preparing a Presentation commands for PowerPoint. Unfortunately in the final release the naming was harmonized into "Home" for all those most important contexts but who looks close can see the differences between the applications. That is a completely new and forward-looking interaction design I really like. We will get used to it and everyone new to using computers won't understand how it could be different in the past.
#2: SmartArt Graphics
Here comes the practical one, and if I were the marketing manager for the Microsoft Office suite, I would push this as the most important USP into the center of all campaigns. I am not, so you find it buried deep in Microsoft's web pages at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA100395371033.aspx and http://www.macoffice2008.com/#os_sa.
My main business need: Create graphical illustrations, especially in PowerPoint.
The challenge up-to-now (from Microsoft's website): "If you use earlier versions of Microsoft Office, you can spend a lot of time making shapes the same size and aligning them properly, getting your text to look right, and manually formatting the shapes to match the document's overall style, instead of focusing on your content."
And (in my words): The underlying data structure of most information graphics is a list of entries several levels deep. The graphics itself is a pictorial representation of that list of entries. Beyond deciding after your first draft that the graphical elements should be red instead of blue, you might want to change the process from being depicted linearly with arrows but in a circle with rectangles instead. With the new Office it is a matter of seconds to change that. Really.
Advice to Microsoft: Bring those features to the front, the competition is approaching!
Advice to the competition: Introduce some features for your single non-Email Office products (not concerning collaboration and sharing) that go beyond Word 1980s DTP and Excels calculation business needs. First of all, we need logical document structures that enable to syndicate the content across different forms/ styles of output.
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