Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog
A Note From the Author
I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, but after six months of relatively civil discourse, a few...
Author: jensenh Date: 03/21/2006
Usability Stockholm Syndrome
One of the many ways we test designs with real people is through usability testing. Although in...
Author: jensenh Date: 03/20/2006
Obscure Options, Meet Super Tooltips
Many moons ago, I mentioned that one of the impetuses behind the new Office 2007 user interface was...
Author: jensenh Date: 03/17/2006
Hello World, For Real
Today I present guest writer Savraj Dhanjal, Program Manager on the Office User Experience Team. He...
Author: jensenh Date: 03/16/2006
Lingering Around
One of the key concepts in the Office 2007 user interface is Contextual Tabs. Whenever an object is...
Author: jensenh Date: 03/15/2006
Adding Groups to the Quick Access Toolbar
A great deal of the time spent in an Office development schedule after Beta 1 is put towards...
Author: jensenh Date: 03/14/2006
Black and Blue
As was to be expected, the publishing of new Office 2007 screenshots last Thursday brought along a...
Author: jensenh Date: 03/13/2006
Picture This: A New Look For Office
This morning at the CeBIT conference in Germany, we revealed the new visuals for the Office 2007...
Author: jensenh Date: 03/09/2006
Pixel Envy
People care about the pixels a lot. And why not? Few things elicit as deep of an emotional response...
Author: jensenh Date: 03/08/2006
Which menu items get icons?
One of the mysteries of the menus-and-toolbars based UI of Office 97-2003 is "which menu items get...
Author: jensenh Date: 03/06/2006
It's the Reason for Being
Although the focus of my blog is the Office 2007 user interface, really the purpose of any software...
Author: jensenh Date: 03/03/2006
Designing Against a Degrading Experience
I'm sure many of you have experienced being the "one who knows about computers." In social and...
Author: jensenh Date: 03/02/2006
Variations on a Theme by Office
Howard Cooperstein is a Lead Program Manager in the PowerPoint and OfficeArt group. This week's post...
Author: jensenh Date: 03/01/2006
Naming Your Outlook Quick Flags
One of the features we built into the Outlook 2003 user interface is called Quick Flags. You can...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/28/2006
Not So Set In Our Ways After All
Back in the article "Set In Our Ways?" I talked about one of the design issues we were thinking...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/27/2006
An Unintentional Week of Keyboard
For some reason (entirely unintentional) I've spent a bunch of this week babbling about keyboard...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/24/2006
Odds, Ends, Shortcuts, and Accelerators
First of all, due to a glitch in the system, Howard's article about the philosophy behind Themes in...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/23/2006
The Elements of Office Style
Howard Cooperstein is a Lead Program Manager in the PowerPoint and OfficeArt group. Last week I gave...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/22/2006
Which Letter Is Better?
I mentioned a few days ago that the team has been immersed lately in improving the Office 2007...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/21/2006
Prototyping With PowerPoint
A couple of weeks ago when I talked about The Feature Bob Invented, I mentioned that we use...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/20/2006
The Biggest Loser
As we continue to work on the visual design of the 2007 Office apps, we've been very conscious of...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/17/2006
Introducing the 2007 Microsoft Office System
Today, the product I've been blogging about for the last six months as Office "12"...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/16/2006
Office Themes: Getting Documents To Sing One (Beautiful) Song
Today I present the first of what I hope are many guest articles on Office user interface issues...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/15/2006
The Keyboard At Your Command
We've been working a lot lately on improving the Office 12 keyboard model, so my mind is trapped in...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/14/2006
It's Gonna Be A Hot Summer
I spend a lot of time here writing about the new Office 12 UI. And why not--it's the project I work...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/10/2006
Set In Our Ways?
Today, just thinking aloud... A minor design conundrum we face is as follows: based on the data we...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/09/2006
The Second Time Is Always Better
Speaking of options, did you know you can show two time zones at once in the Outlook calendar? This...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/08/2006
The Expert Mode Misadventure
It may seem based on my writing that the ideas behind the Office 12 user interface kind of popped...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/07/2006
Rich Menus
You may remember that last week I described the textual separators that we use in Office 12 menus to...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/06/2006
Going Gray
One of the key design tenets of the Office 12 user interface is making sure that the set of features...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/03/2006
Control Your Text In Word
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about holding down the Alt key while selecting text in Word to draw a...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/02/2006
What software do you love?
Today marks the start of February, the "month of love." In commemoration, I want to ask you a...
Author: jensenh Date: 02/01/2006
Flea Market of Functionality
Last Monday, I set out a simple brain teaser for the Word gurus out there. I listed a number of...
Author: jensenh Date: 01/31/2006
A Separate Piece
I'm not sure when menu separators were invented. They could well have been dreamed up at Xerox PARC...
Author: jensenh Date: 01/30/2006
Obsession to Detail
The success of a user interface depends on getting the details right. That's not to say that a...
Author: jensenh Date: 01/26/2006
Drop Me A Line (Office 12 Coolness, Part 6)
Another in my series of posts on personal favorite improvements in Office 12... Did you know there...
Author: jensenh Date: 01/25/2006
The Feature Bob Invented
It was a cold winter afternoon early in 2004, and we were in the midst of doing some of the first...
Author: jensenh Date: 01/24/2006
The End of Personalized Menus
As faithful readers of this blog, you no doubt know that not every program shipping with the Office...
Author: jensenh Date: 01/20/2006
A Better Box Of Crayons
Perhaps because I was never the kid who had the super sized 128-pack of crayons, I never developed...
Author: jensenh Date: 01/19/2006
Improve Your Outlook
Because Office 12 represents the first time we've ever introduced a new user interface for Office,...
Author: jensenh Date: 01/16/2006
Selecting With the Magic Box
Here's a handy trick to kick off your weekend. You've got a few columns of text in a Word document,...
Author: jensenh Date: 01/13/2006
Tools for the Transition
A lot of people are involved with helping to produce documentation and tools to help ensure a smooth...
Author: jensenh Date: 01/12/2006
Symbolism (Office 12 Coolness, Part 5)
In every phase of my life in which I've been required to create documents, a different set of...
Author: jensenh Date: 01/11/2006