This document summarizes the user experience design process at Microsoft for Office and Windows Vista. It discusses how Office evolved from Word 1.0 to introduce innovations like the ribbon interface to make the software more efficient and easy to use. For Windows Vista, the goals were to make common tasks efficient and results more visual. Extensive user research involving thousands of participants was conducted to understand user needs and measure improvements. Key lessons learned included focusing on the overall experience rather than just new features and making the experience less complex.

1. Design in the trenches Chris Bernard, User Experience Evangelist, Microsoft

2. All the content in this presentation came from my hard working design peers at Microsoft, I didn’t do any of this work, I’m just sharing their good deeds. All photos in this presentation are from istockphoto.com unless otherswise noted and are used for educational purposes. For office, all of the principles, thoughts, etc. came from Jensen Harris. For Windows Vista, ideas came from Jenny Lam and Tjeerd Hoek. Do a web search on these guys (I suggest Windows Live Search <ahem>) to find out what they are up to today. They are all brilliant design peers and I hope this presentation helps you learn as much from them as I did. Please visit www.microsoft.com/expression and look under the knowledge center to fine a video of me giving this presentation. Or try: http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/f/f/1fff960f-51a2-44b1-b033-bf25a3c7c7ab/BRE001.wmv

4. UX

7. Beginnings

8. Xerox Star

11. Experience Rewarding Moments

12. For Microsoft, it started with a clear sense of mission … … with the desire to be more than we are today. A highly coveted brand. A more skilled competitor. A better partner. A more profitable entity. A maker of more productive and enjoyable experience. A legacy.

13. User Experience principles Useful New capabilities that customers want and need. Usable Efficient for familiar and easy for unfamiliar tasks. Desirable Builds emotional connections; both familiar and new. Feasible Achievable on time with available technology.

14. Office User Experience Design

15. Word 1.0

16. Word 6.0

17. Word 97

18. Running into Fitt’s Law

19. Nathan Myhrvold's 1 st law of software “ Software is a gas”

21. Adaptive Menus: Office 2000 “ Long” Menu “ Short” Menu

22. Rafted Toolbars: Office 2000

23. Task Panes: Office XP

24. Some Tipping Points

25. Word Menus Word 1.0 50 Word 6.0 100 Word 97 200 Word 2003 250+

26. Tool Menus & Task Panes Word 1.0 2 Word 6.0 7 Word 97 15 Word 2000 30 menus 50 task panes

27. Time for a change

28. Fast at any Speed

29. Avoiding the Junk Drawer

30. Mastering Details obsession to detail

31. Contextual Tabs

32. Dropdown Gallery

33. Grid Layout Gallery

34. In-Ribbon Gallery

35. Quick Access and Magic Corners

36. Mini-Toolbar: Closer to the Cursor

37. Larger control labels

38. The Ribbon for Word

39. The Ribbon for Excel

40. The Ribbon for PowerPoint

42. Vista User Experience Design

43. Design Goals Make getting what you need efficient & easy Make getting the results you want in Windows more… visual & direct Make people feel great about their experience… creating a positive emotional experience

45. First Impressions

46. Set up and welcome

47. Start menu, Start button

48. Taskbar & Tray

49. Window management

50. Glass window frames

52. Live Icons (thumbnails)

53. Explorer

54. Common File Dialogs

55. Top 200 error messages and notifications removed, fixed or improved

56. Control Panel

57. Our Process

58. Customer research

60. Selected usability focused projects for Office 2007 Office 2003 benchmark Eye tracking Card sort Internal longitudinal studies The “Truman” show Office 12 benchmark Extended usage study Beta survey and visits

61. Selected usability focused projects for Vista 3000+ users in 1:1 research or small group research during the making of Windows Vista Instrumentation data was gathered from 8000+ XP users 20,000+ users participating in instrumentation programs to gather usage and configuration data and info through survey panels Tracking 150+ common tasks for ease of use in Windows Vista 30+ consumer families using beta since 2005 to give feedback on the day-to-day experience Families in 7 countries in field research (US, India, Japan, Mexico, Germany, Finland, Israel) Ethnographic research was conducted in Finland, Korea, Brazil, India, Russia, and US. Engaged with international enterprises to understand their baseline use of XP and monitor improvements with Windows Vista as beta has been deployed For Living with Vista we have received close to 5000 comments from 50 families (US and international) since the inception of the program at Beta 1 in August ‘05

62. The Paper Prototype

63. 1000 Card Pickup

64. Measuring results

65. What Microsoft has learned

66. people want more functionality but want it to be presented as less Source: Jakob Nielsen

67. the experience is not part of the product— the product is part of the experience

68. The experience is the product

69. Where to learn more Get links to the following: Jensen Harris Blog, Microsoft Office Product Manger Microsoft Design Web site Microsoft Expression Web site Windows Vista Website Office UI Standards Vista UI Standards … at: www.designthinkingdigest.com Look for a Design in the Trenches Content at www.microsoft.com/expression

70. Designing at Microsoft

71. Question & Answer?

72. Thank you