Abstract

In this paper we present a preliminary usability test of Microsoft™ Office 2007 new interface. It is interesting to consider the impact of this radical change in a well-known UI like Microsoft Office because of the large number of users involved. The analysis has been conducted on the two main products of the suite: Microsoft™ Word and Microsoft™ Excel. Our objective is to analyze some usability aspects regarding the consistence of the interface and the impact on users’ productivity. We draw some hypothesis by comparing some variables: among others, we observed that users with a higher familiarity on the “old-style” UI experienced more difficulties to perform tasks, while users with less familiarity experienced fewer difficulties. The problem is more noticeable when interaction style is completely different from the traditional one. This critical state regards mainly habitual users that experiment more difficulties to perform tasks than new users, and this seems to be in contrast with some claims that point on a higher usability of the new interface.

Citation

Colazzo, L., Molinari, A. & Tomasini, S. (2008). Is new necessarily good? Testing usability of the new Office 2007 user interface. In J. Luca & E. Weippl (Eds.), Proceedings of ED-MEDIA 2008--World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications (pp. 1371-1379). Vienna, Austria: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved May 30, 2023 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/28562/.

© 2008 Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)

Keywords

• Computer Sciences