J
Joseph M. Newcomer
I made the horrible mistake of trying to use PPT 2007. Without a doubt, this is the
single WORST example of a user interface I have had the misfortune to be subjected to in
many years. In PPT 2003, I used a set of custom toolbars, which took me minutes to
create, so that everything I needed was one click away. In PPT 2007, the most common
things I do, repeatedly, are three to four clicks away. My productivity has gone down by
a factor of ten, because NOTHING I need is contained in a single tab; I waste another
click or two just finding the right tab, then three or four clicks to get to what I need,
one operation after another! Sometimes I have to flip back and forth between tabs because
the tasks involve two consecutive operations that someone decided are not part of the same
tab (nobody asked what professional users do as part of their workflow; in fact, the
concept of "workflow" seems to be consistently and deliberately ignored in all new
designs).
Remember: never trust a user interface designed by a programmer; it is hierarchical,
logical, well-organized, and totally unusable.
I've read the blather about all the research they did. At no point, did they say "We
studied the workflow of highly-experienced users"; in every case it was "we took people
who didn't know how to use the programs and made it easy for them to learn". While this
is a useful goal, it should not be confused with the consequence, which is "by making it
easy for naive users, we made it impossible for professionals to get their work done".
The documentation proudly proclaims that I cannot add anything to the toolbar (apparently
as if this is an advantage) unless I use XML and programming, but the help, written by
some of the worst documentation people that they could find, does not contain a hyperlink
from this declaration to the place I would go to in order to discover how to do this.
Searching for "XML" revealed nothing; apparently the feature is so unimportant that it is
not even documented! (Clearly, if it WAS documented, I could find it IMMEDIATELY in the
help file!) All I get is a useless link to the MSDN site, where I learn that Silverlight
3 is released, Expression Blend 3 RC candidate is available, some pictures of bloggers
(WOW! JUST WHAT I WANT WHEN I WANT TO LEARN ABOUT HOW TO PROGRAM POWERPOINT EXTENSIONS!
PICTURES OF BLOGGERS!) Why is there an assumption that I want to read Web pages instead
of documentation that is on my machine? It took me six clicks to locate anything useful;
if I click on a hyperlink about XML documentation, I expect to be placed into the Web page
that explains that fact to me, not some useless entry page that tells me about bloggers!
Better still, I expect to be linked to the help that is installed on my machine! Perhaps
it has not occurred to the people who do this that I might be working from an airplane or
from a site without Internet access. In which case, they are either stupid or arrogant,
neither of which is a reasonable attitude consistent with "customer service".
So I find that I need to download a file (why was it not delivered as part of the
product?) of control IDs, but the only control IDs seem to be for Excel. Unless I missed
something subtle about how Excel is the same as PowerPoint.
I finally discovered the article on interface customization. WHAT PART OF "SIMPLIFIED
INTERFACE" HAVE THEY FAILED TO UNDERSTAND? In any sane world, where the design exhibited
the slightest degree of intelligence (we know software evolves because there is not the
slightest evidence of intelligent design anywhere), I would bring up a customization menu,
click a button to create a new tab, drag icons from the dialog to the new tab, and in ten
minutes I would have my customized interface. Wow! What progress! No, wait a
minute...THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN ABLE TO DO FOR YEARS! So the interface is "improved" by
REMOVING user-oriented features. Perhaps this is meaning of the word "improvement" of
which I have been previously unaware. Instead, I have going to have to spend HOURS
creating what I already had! (Another "improvement", I'm sure).
Has anyone ever explained to Microsoft about how EXPERIENCED users work with their tools?
They destroyed the usability of Visual Studio, and destroyed the usability of Office, and
with Windows7 destroyed the usability of the desktop, what is left to destroy? What part
of "ease of use for professionals" do they consistently miss? I don't care HOW easy they
make it for my 90-year-old mother, I LIVE in these tools and they are getting consistently
harder for the experienced professional to survive in.
joe
Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP]
email: (e-mail address removed)
Web: http://www.flounder.com
MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm
single WORST example of a user interface I have had the misfortune to be subjected to in
many years. In PPT 2003, I used a set of custom toolbars, which took me minutes to
create, so that everything I needed was one click away. In PPT 2007, the most common
things I do, repeatedly, are three to four clicks away. My productivity has gone down by
a factor of ten, because NOTHING I need is contained in a single tab; I waste another
click or two just finding the right tab, then three or four clicks to get to what I need,
one operation after another! Sometimes I have to flip back and forth between tabs because
the tasks involve two consecutive operations that someone decided are not part of the same
tab (nobody asked what professional users do as part of their workflow; in fact, the
concept of "workflow" seems to be consistently and deliberately ignored in all new
designs).
Remember: never trust a user interface designed by a programmer; it is hierarchical,
logical, well-organized, and totally unusable.
I've read the blather about all the research they did. At no point, did they say "We
studied the workflow of highly-experienced users"; in every case it was "we took people
who didn't know how to use the programs and made it easy for them to learn". While this
is a useful goal, it should not be confused with the consequence, which is "by making it
easy for naive users, we made it impossible for professionals to get their work done".
The documentation proudly proclaims that I cannot add anything to the toolbar (apparently
as if this is an advantage) unless I use XML and programming, but the help, written by
some of the worst documentation people that they could find, does not contain a hyperlink
from this declaration to the place I would go to in order to discover how to do this.
Searching for "XML" revealed nothing; apparently the feature is so unimportant that it is
not even documented! (Clearly, if it WAS documented, I could find it IMMEDIATELY in the
help file!) All I get is a useless link to the MSDN site, where I learn that Silverlight
3 is released, Expression Blend 3 RC candidate is available, some pictures of bloggers
(WOW! JUST WHAT I WANT WHEN I WANT TO LEARN ABOUT HOW TO PROGRAM POWERPOINT EXTENSIONS!
PICTURES OF BLOGGERS!) Why is there an assumption that I want to read Web pages instead
of documentation that is on my machine? It took me six clicks to locate anything useful;
if I click on a hyperlink about XML documentation, I expect to be placed into the Web page
that explains that fact to me, not some useless entry page that tells me about bloggers!
Better still, I expect to be linked to the help that is installed on my machine! Perhaps
it has not occurred to the people who do this that I might be working from an airplane or
from a site without Internet access. In which case, they are either stupid or arrogant,
neither of which is a reasonable attitude consistent with "customer service".
So I find that I need to download a file (why was it not delivered as part of the
product?) of control IDs, but the only control IDs seem to be for Excel. Unless I missed
something subtle about how Excel is the same as PowerPoint.
I finally discovered the article on interface customization. WHAT PART OF "SIMPLIFIED
INTERFACE" HAVE THEY FAILED TO UNDERSTAND? In any sane world, where the design exhibited
the slightest degree of intelligence (we know software evolves because there is not the
slightest evidence of intelligent design anywhere), I would bring up a customization menu,
click a button to create a new tab, drag icons from the dialog to the new tab, and in ten
minutes I would have my customized interface. Wow! What progress! No, wait a
minute...THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN ABLE TO DO FOR YEARS! So the interface is "improved" by
REMOVING user-oriented features. Perhaps this is meaning of the word "improvement" of
which I have been previously unaware. Instead, I have going to have to spend HOURS
creating what I already had! (Another "improvement", I'm sure).
Has anyone ever explained to Microsoft about how EXPERIENCED users work with their tools?
They destroyed the usability of Visual Studio, and destroyed the usability of Office, and
with Windows7 destroyed the usability of the desktop, what is left to destroy? What part
of "ease of use for professionals" do they consistently miss? I don't care HOW easy they
make it for my 90-year-old mother, I LIVE in these tools and they are getting consistently
harder for the experienced professional to survive in.
joe
Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP]
email: (e-mail address removed)
Web: http://www.flounder.com
MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm