[0x1ch]

At least to me, it seems most regular users would struggle and have their productivity reduced attempting to learn a new word processing UI. Everyone and their extended family has been trained on Microsoft products, with Microsoft UI design.

I think this matters for the paying customers of things like Collabora and LibreOffice, as they're using it in a work environment. Not at home.

[realityfactchex]

> most regular users would...have their productivity reduced...this matters for the paying customers...using it in a work environment

If the concern is business productivity, then it might be interesting to read that at least some research indicates (perhaps counterintuitively to some) that classic style is better:

"...results indicate that Excel 2003 is significantly superior to Excel 2007 in all the dependent variables...results support the conclusion that the user interface of Excel 2007 did change for the worst in comparison with the user interface of the 2003 version." [0]

[0] Morales (2010), A COMPARATIVE USABILITY STUDY OF MICROSOFT OFFICE 2007 AND MICROSOFT OFFICE 2003, https://scholar7-dev.uprm.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/a03...

[zapzupnz]

A study from 16 years ago is hardly relevant anymore. Back in 2003, people were still familiar with Office 2003's layout; most people have long since forgotten that layout or never learnt it in the first place.

The author doesn't discuss users' existing familiarity with Office 2003 and they only mention the word 'training' once, that "software design to interact with technology should require the least amount of training as possible" whilst never acknowledging that training in, and even qualifications in, the use of the Office suite was very much a thing in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Even then, the most problems were had in Excel. Advanced usage of Excel is done by technical people who would have had some training. Word and PowerPoint weren't shown to have significant difference in usability; arguably, Word is the program most people forced to use the Office suite spend their time in.

Never mind the ways by which the Ribbon and computers have changed since Office 2007. Options moved around, the Ribbon height reduced, screens having gotten wider to compress fewer options into submenus…

The author states at the end of their conclusion:

> In order to determine if the result of the study with respect to the Excel 2007 application persists and are not due to the learning curve the experiment can be repeated with users having at least three years using this version.

Do you know if the author or anybody else followed up?

It would be more interesting to see a comparison between Office 365 now that the interface has effectively become the de facto standard (same as Windows, macOS, mobile, tablet, and the web version) and Google Sheets (which retains the menus, toolbar, etc.).

I'm no lover of the Ribbon myself but I feel like there's better evidence for it not being the ideal interface than this which wouldn't have convinced me even at the time.

This isn't the proof that'll bring down the titan.

[realityfactchex]

>> the study with respect to the Excel 2007 application persists...can be repeated with users having...years using this version.

> Do you know if the author or anybody else followed up

I would love to see more recent and similarly thoughtful work on the exact same subject. If I find more, I'll try to remember to come back here and comment. Definitely, I am interested in the clearest evidence regarding whether either paradigm is "actually" more usable, and not just the result of some confounding variable(s).

With a null hypothesis that the classic toolbar is no better than the ribbon, I just wanted to see some data (instead of assuming that what users have now has to be more efficient for those users just because it's what the market-leading product has been giving users for about two decades).

[zapzupnz]

I suspect any such studies these days will be Office vs Google Docs vs iWork vs LibreOffice. Mind boggles how that data will look!

[andai]

Well, to get a really balanced UX research sample, you must invoke the full trifecta:

- The Zoomer

- The Boomer

- The Clanker

[ameliaquining]

The question is, if you grant that a different design is better in a vacuum, how to weigh that against the benefits of existing familiarity.

[realityfactchex]

That's easy. Would you rather have your coworkers working with an artificial handicap, or not?

Some people give regular users too little credit. A major reason they are such terrible users is because the software they are given is terrible.

Fix the software, and the users' ability is, to a measurable degree, fixed.

Existing familiarity is nothing compared with the daily additive benefits of better tools.

[itsrobreally]

I agree - we're coming up on 20 years of the ribbon, it is too jarring to go back to the fixed toolbars and the vast majority of computer users have no experience with the "old way."

[trnglina]

Except for all the people who use Google Docs, I suppose.

[0x1ch]

This is true I suppose. Google Docs is a bit different. I'm not very familiar with their offerings. Here in the US, most stop using it past grade school and graduate to MS products after, at least in my experience.

I don't think it matters since Universities will not be taking Google Doc submissions unless it's core ed classes, any beyond it will be LaTeX anyways.

[pjmlp]

LaTeX is no longer the king of universities, Word has been for quite some time part of the official templates.

https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions

And I can tell that while at CERN, those using LaTeX on paper submissions were the minority, on ATLAS TDAQ/HLT group it was a mix of Word, and FrameMaker.

[0x1ch]

Maybe this is unique to my comp sci program, but all of our final papers in my program were required in LaTeX before graduating in 2023.

[direwolf20]

Google Docs implements the most popular 10% of features that people use 90% of the time.

It was said in the distant past that the last 10% of the time everyone is using different features — the long tail 90% of features. You had to implement them in your software.

When did we switch so we adapt our workflows instead, and only use the common features now? And software doesn't have to implement the long tail?

[kwanbix]

I have worked in 3 companies in the last 8 years and we all use gsuite just fine. I will even say that I really prefer gsuite over office365 web.

[jimnotgym]

I would like an easy way to switch between the two paradigms. I got used to the ribbon