The Story of the Office Ribbon

Very interesting video from Jensen Harris, the UI guy for Microsoft Office 2007. [Link]

Last week, I presented a session at MIX called "The Story of the Ribbon." I talked a bit about the general design process we used to come up with the Office 2007 user interface, to iterate on it, and to evaluate it. As part of the discussion, I showed for the first time some of the early prototypes we worked on (and abandoned or refined) along the way.

It's always fun to present substantially new content, and this was my first time giving large portions of this talk. The audience was great and, although you can't hear them on the video, they seemed to be into it and enjoying the presentation. It was a lot of fun!

Download "The Story of the Ribbon"
(Windows Media, 146 MB)

Alternate Formats:

Play in Silverlight

Download for iPod
(.mp4, 121 MB)

Download the PowerPoint slides only
(.pptx, 20 MB)

Well worth watching to see how software design decision get made.