Jensen Harris, director of program management for the Microsoft Windows User Experience Team, explains on his blog some of the logic that influenced the design of the ribbon interface:

Three-plus years later, why is the ribbon still an issue?

“[One] way we use the data is by looking for frequently used features that are hard to get to today. Any time we see this, it represents people overcoming the user interface to use a buried feature because it’s so important.

“A great example of this is ‘superscript’ in Word. In Word 2003, it must be added to the toolbar manually through customization. Yet, even as a non-default toolbar button, it gets more clicks than 30% of the buttons on the Formatting toolbar. The opportunity here is to discover the things that people love and that even more people would use if they knew they could.”

Harris makes oodles of sense. (So much so, it makes me want to uninstall my copy of OpenOffice.) Still, almost four years after it was unveiled, Microsoft’s ribbon continues to confound end users and IT departments.

And “confound” is not an exaggeration: According to a recent report sponsored by Dell KACE and conducted by Dimensional Research, of those IT leaders surveyed, 45 percent said their greatest concern in upgrading to 2010 is the ribbon.

So, three-plus years later, why is the ribbon still an issue? Read more…

Jenny Sweeney migration, Office 2010, Windows 7 computerworld, Dell, Harris Jensen, Microsoft, productivity, the Ribbon

We may very well be embarking on the decade of the customer. Social media, especially Twitter, has empowered customers, and the recession has reminded businesses that keeping clients is easier than bringing in new ones.

It’s like watching your siblings bicker at Sunday dinner. Ugh. Enough already. Bring on a solution.

With the current state of customer service, a renewed focus would be a welcome change.

Look at current tech publications and you will surely find a rant or three about horrific customer experiences (for a recent one, see CIO.com’s “Tech Vendors Behaving Badly”). Search Twitter for “customer service” and you will find scores of tweets cursing the ineptitude of Company X and Company Y.

It’s like watching your siblings bicker at Sunday dinner. Ugh. Enough already. Bring on a solution.

You can start by taking note of a recent book, “Your Call is (Not That) Important to Us,” written by Emily Yellin (http://www.emilyyellin.com/) and featured in a recent AARP Bulletin story. Yellin, a journalist, wrote the book after enduring a particularly frustrating customer service experience herself.

Her book presents a fresh look at the customer service industry, and offers the average person some insight into the reasons many companies opt to automate and outsource to foreign companies. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Customer Service AARP, CIO.com, Customer Service, Dell, Emily Yellin, FACEBOOK, JetBlue, Outsourcing, Twitter, Zappos