Obsession to Detail

Article
01/26/2006

The success of a user interface depends on getting the details right.
That's not to say that a little bit of fit-and-finish work can save a horrible
design, but a good idea won't thrive either unless enough of the little details
are right.

I know that I am sometimes frustrating to work for because I
can be a bit of a perfectionist around the UI. Especially during the last
part of the product cycle, I'm constantly prodding and poking (and asking those
around me to prod and poke) to make sure that every decision we make is as good
as it can be. (I mean, you only get one chance to do something like
this, right?)

Our development team has gone out of their way to provide us the
opportunities to get the details right. Unfortunately, sometimes getting
the small stuff right costs way more time and energy than doing something "most
of the way." Yet, the whole team has remained committed to going beyond
the "good enough" mentality so that the user experience is seamless in ways you
wouldn't even notice unless we got them wrong.

One of my favorite examples of this was a design change we made a number of
months ago called "Eat Dismiss Clicks."

Here's the setup. Let's say that you drop down a menu in Windows.
Now, instead of clicking a menu item, you click somewhere else on the screen.
This has always dismissed the menu and sent a mouse click to wherever you
clicked. Nothing surprising so far; this is just how the Windows focus
model works.

Now, let's say you insert a Picture in Office 12. As you know from
my
discussion of Contextual Tabs, the Picture Tools appear in the Ribbon because
the picture is selected. So far so good.

You decide you want to add a shadow to the picture. So, you drop down
the Shadow gallery from the Ribbon and look through the shadows available.
You don't see anything you like, so you click somewhere other than the gallery
to dismiss it.

BAM! Your click goes through to the document. Because the click
wasn't on the picture, the picture gets deselected. Because the picture
got deselected, the Picture Tools disappear. Now, all of a sudden, just
because you didn't see a shadow you wanted, all of your tools disappeared and
you have no idea why.

It's easy from a developer point of view to explain this as the "correct"
behavior. The behavior is perfectly logical, and it follows the way focus
has worked in Windows for decades. It would have been tempting to have
just left this as is, and to have rationalized that people should make sure to hit "Escape" or
to click somewhere on the Ribbon or title bar to dismiss the gallery instead.

But when we looked at people actually trying to use the product, they didn't
"aim" their "dismiss the menu" click at all. They weren't actually trying
to both make the gallery go away and also perform some action with a single
click. Clicking away from the gallery was just an efficient and
discoverable way of making it disappear. The software was behaving
rationally, yet it nonetheless managed to completely confound the user's
expectations.

So, we had a quandary. Making a fix was expensive, complicated, and
involved working around the Windows focus model. The test team was
concerned that a lot of unforeseen quality regressions would occur. Code
down deep in each of the apps would have to change. It was the kind of
scary technical problem no one wanted to touch with a ten-foot pole.

Did we make the change? You betcha.

Because it was too important
to get the details right not to. We bit the bullet, worked through the
technical issues, found and fixed the bugs, and checked it in.

And now? People find this part of the experience to be seamless.
No one ever notices the work the team did to get that detail of the design
right, because it works the way you'd expect if you just sit down and start
using it. Sure, there's a detailed and complicated technical story behind
how it works--but that's what we get paid for, figuring out how to put technology at the
service of delivering great software experiences.

The "Eat Dismiss Clicks" story is emblematic of how our
team has
tried to go beyond to get the little things right in the Office 12 UI. If we do
the job well,
the experience is seamless, responsive, and predictable, and it makes all of the
extra work worthwhile.

It's the obsession to get the details right that makes all the difference.

Comments

Anonymous
January 26, 2006
Guys, your work is really amazing, and I'm glad, that you're doing this. Thanks a lot.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
This sounds very interesting. Can you give a little more detail on what happens now?

What if I actually want to close the Picture Tools and go back to the doc? Will that take another click?
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
to the dude above:

windows doesnt have the ribbon interface... duh!
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
Jensen,

You're such a good story teller. Thanks again for the blog. So what is the behavior now? Let me guess - When you first click off the picture, the Picture ribbon tab stays there. You'll have to click a second time to select another object?

If that's the case, that reminds me of the way split windows in Word works - the multiple clicking is quite annoying.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
I think Jensen was referring to drop-down menus in the ribbon (like the underline feature in a previous post). Jensen, correct me if I'm wrong, but this only applies IF you have a drop-down menu open. It does not apply to the contextual tabs (for instance, if you click a picture, and you click a tab in the contextual "Picture," tab, it only takes one click to deselect the picture, and the picture tab goes away).

I agree that if it takes two clicks to deselect an item with a contextual tab open, it would be very annoying.

BTW, I have greatly enjoyed your Office blog and all the thought and hard work that went in the new user interface.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
I'm a bit of a UI zealot myself, and I think this sounds like a good thing. The click to dismiss the gallery doesn't change the application's focus away from the picture, thus preserving the picture tools. This, I think, is the behaviour I would prefer.

Going around the Windows focus model then is not a bad thing in this case. Okay sure, one poster above said this should have been done at the Windows level. Do you REALLY want to upgrade to Windows Vista in order to use Office?

This is (particularly with the Ribbon) just the kind of exception to the system-wide UI rules that some apps NEED to make just to make it look like the system-wide UI rules are in effect. I know it makes no sense, but sometimes applying rules without any exceptions is the worst possible thing you can do, and it's not necessarily because the rules are wrong, but because the rules can never anticipate the needs of every application's interface.

I bet all the naysayers here will be using this in a year's time and won't bat an eyelid because as Jensen said, you won't even have noticed it. That's good design, and I'll break as many rules as necessary to get it.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
What Matt said sums it up.

As much hand-wringing as you can do about the technological implications and how this violates this or that... in the real world, no one will ever notice this one except that it doesn't feel broken.

If I didn't make the behavior clear, it's this: Whenever a dropdown menu or gallery is open (only), a click in the document surface of Office dismisses the menu but doesn't perform the click on the document.

And, yes we had many power users say "this would never work" and "it'll slow me down." Yet, the behavior is been in the product since way before Beta 1 and I've yet to hear a complaint on it.

When someone drops down a menu, they usually either use something on it, or click somewhere away from it to make it go away. That's the behavior we've codified. It's not a power-user vs. basic-user thing.

It's an interesting theoretical discussion, but I think when you actually use the product, you'll agree that it feels right.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
first :

wake up man

you WILL upgrade to vista.
you pc is owned, didn't you know that by now?

:)

-----

again I am not saying this change is bad. on the contrary.
I'm saying the research done by the office team should be done by the OS team.
I'm saying the office team should not depart from the windows UI. not one iota.

Does that mean that both teams should be merged?
well in a user oriented environement YES DEFINITLY.
In a so-called "free market" (hahaha) that ain't gonna happend.
Microsoft cannot spend money on making /any/ app as good as office 12 is gonna be by doing the research on the UI side of things.

so again we are on the "upgrade ui schemes bandwagon": first office comes with new ideas, then the others (adobe, etc..) then microsoft blatently "steals" the best ideas and integrate them into the os.

ok steal is not the right word, free market, right.

wake up
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
"When someone drops down a menu, they usually either use something on it, or click somewhere away from it to make it go away. That's the behavior we've codified. "

WHY ?
why do the want to make it go away? why did they open it in the first place? how can i prevent them from opening it if they don't need it?

Respectfully, sir, I wonder if these questions even sliped through your mind..
(I think theses question would help thee widen your approach, not necessarily their answers , if any)

---

"It's not a power-user vs. basic-user thing"

not at all , sir, i agree:

it's a conceptor's point of vu VS a user's point of vu
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
'But when we looked at people actually trying to use the product, they didn't "aim" their "dismiss the menu" click at all.'

Uh, guys, I think you missed the point here. Jensen's team didn't want to change the focus model, but they did it because user testing showed it was necessary. There is no "right" or "wrong" in the land of user interface, only better and worse. What is better for some people is always worse for others. Two posters above value consistency, while another values minimum mouse clicks. Jensen's research, on the other hand, shows that people actually using the software prefer to minimize context switches in a highly context-sensitive environment. I think people using this unique interface have more say than people with idealistic theories based on existing interfaces.

Also, from a consistency point of view, I think the new functionality is the correct one. When using a traditional app, opening a menu and then clicking in the document area has no effect most of the time. It does have an effect if the user has hilighted some text, but this is not really common. Now, when moving to the new interface, opening a menu and then clicking in the document area has huge effects, changing the tabbed editing context. As far as the user is concerned, the new interface is "acting differently" than what they are used to. Remember, focus rules are technical details that users aren't consciously aware of. The rules may be different in the new UI, but the experience is the same.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
"focus rules are technical details that users aren't consciously aware of"

So it seems the conceptor has two options:

1/Teach the user to be aware of these
thus making him aware of what's going on, thus giving him the locus of control, thus making it harder to learn but easier to use the UI
(respect towards the user, hypothesis that he actualy can and is willing to learn)

2/decide what will happen in place of the user
thus making the user dependent on what goes on that he's unaware of, thus taking the locus of control away from him.
(no respect, hypothesis that the user is ... "dumb" ?)
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
Oh, and somebody mentioned the seemingly non-deterministic behavior of IE and Word when you try to select text with the mouse, and it FIGHTS you, it literally fights to prevent you from doing what you want to do — well, amen to that complaint, too. It's like pushing the positive poles of two magnets together just trying to select a few letters with the mouse! This kind of garbage turns the simplest task into a struggle against actively antagonistic software. Why? Can't you just let me get my work done?

Remember the "personalized menus"? Didn't you guys learn from that?
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
Elliot and others:

You're making a big mistake with UIs: dismissing an idea without trying it first.

In the development arena, it's the number one killer of innovative UI design. It's really easy to say "That won't work", but it's completely different to try it, test it, inspect the results and say "That didn't work".

I was skeptical when I read Jensen's entry myself, but I haven't actually used the new Office, and a little bird told me that Jensen actually has used it -- and tested it too.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
I ditto Hanford, and this particular problem (I am not talking about the various related problems that came up in the discussions) is something that has come up in previous user studies (and I personally HATE it). When a user opens a menu and WANTS to dismiss it a NORMAL way to do that IS to click anywhere but ON the options the user wants to avoid! If the rest of windows does not do that... well... it should. I can think of countless times that I have right clicked on a web-page to print it - and then changed my mind and clicked outside only to find a link and unwittingly navigate somewhere else.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
Rod,

It's a play on the phrase "attention to detail." The mixed idiom was intentional.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
Of all the topics I write about, I have to say I wouldn't have guessed this one would be the one to set off the comment storm.

I do like the vigorous discussion though. :)

The reason that expert users don't realize this is a problem often is that they're already skilled enough on a subconcious level to do their dismiss click in a place that has no effect. I think if you monitor yourself using Windows over the coming weeks, you'll see this yourself.

Also, the Contextual Tabs raise the level of "badness" when you do hit this scenario. It wasn't really a big deal up until now because the worst that happened was that your selection changed.

I don't disagree with the comments that Windows could/should consider adopting this behavior in general. I think it would be a good thing. But given the amount we're changing Office, we had to do the right thing to make our interface work.

Just an FYI that the Mac does and has always gone much further then what I described in this post. On the Mac, switching focus is always a click onto itself. We only did so far a relatively constrained scenario: dismissing a popup menu or gallery.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
I don't believe this will badly affect power users, contrary to what Elliot and Alexandre-Jean are saying.

Scenario 1: (Beginning user)
Opens a drop-down menu, and doesn't find what he wants. To close it, he clicks somewhere on his document.

Office 2003: Random things happen, depending on where he clicks
Office 12: Menu closes, nothing else changes

Scenario 2: (Power user)
Opens a ribbon drop-down menu, and doesn't see what she wants. She knows that randomly clicking somewhere else is a bad idea, so she deliberately clicks on an empty space in the UI, or clicks on the same menu again to close it.

Office 2003: Menu closes, nothing else changes
Office 12: Menu closes, nothing else changes

So the UI experience is IMPROVED for the beginner, and the SAME for the power user (or even BETTER, once she realizes she doesn't have to be quite as careful where she clicks to close the menu!)

I think you all are inventing some other scenario where this could actually cause some confusion:

Scenario 3: (Power user)
Opens a drop-down menu, and doesn't find what he wants. WITHOUT closing the window, he decides to take some specific action in his document (select a different graphic, for example). He's not worried about the open menu, because he knows it will close when he clicks down on the document.

Office 2003: Menu closes, graphic #2 is selected
Office 12: Menu closes, nothing else changes. Now he clicks again to select the graphic.

Scenario 3 is a CORNER CASE, and only requires ONCE to figure out how it works.

...

All that said, I have to admit that I find it EXTREMELY ANNOYING that you have to click TWICE to select a cell in Excel (lets say you're copying a bunch of individual values from another document). It ends up looking like:

* Select source data in your browser window
* Ctrl-C
* Click the destination cell in Excel (just activates the application)
* Ctrl-V
* Swear because the data went in the wrong cell
* Ctrl-Z to undo
* Click to select the RIGHT cell
* Ctrl-V

Lather, rinse, repeat.
And yes, even though I KNOW how it works, it still gets me all the time.

...

One more thing: are they FINALLY going to get rid of the idiotic "when you paste in Excel, it clears the clipboard!!!" stupidity?

Yes, I know there was a reason for it, but I think its finally time to change it to the way that 99.83% of all windows applications work.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
BTW Jensen, this entry you wrote highlights another reason why having UI design seperate from UI implmentation is good thing. Some companies put the UI team in a Customer Service department rather than R&D because they feel that their end goals are different, although I think doing that hurts more than it helps.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
nice exemple , but missleading.

I do not want an intuitive interface. word is to much a bloatware to be intuitive.
(btw , i luv word)

I want an efficient interface.
efficient interfaces have to be learned.
(see raskin's demonstration on that point)

now of course if the bottom button was correctly label "to go up" I would find that un-intuitive, but that would not errode the efficiency of the button.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
in his post, Elliot Bridge said:

Jensen says,
"
in the real world, no one will ever notice this one except that it doesn't feel broken.
"

That's not so. I'll notice it, and Adrian and Alexandre-Jean above will notice it. We'll notice that the UI is behaving contrary to expectations.

now....

could that mean that you do not have a REAL world measure tool?
hummmm

I sure think so, Jensenh. That is why having among your brainstorming a few teachers would have been good.
they know the real world, the End Users. I'm convinced you don't , whatever the tests you run.

OR

did you select your user panel exactly as you wanted them to be? (thus leveling by the bottom, as i fear)
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
Jensen wrote:
"Clicking away from the gallery was just an efficient and discoverable way of making it disappear."

Why should the user have to "discover" that? Why not PROVIDE a way of closing the gallery. (Perhaps a red X in the top-right corner!)

If a way of closing menus had been provided before, people would not have needed to click elsewhere to close them. As a power user, I still find it frustrating to have to find a "safe" spot to click to close menus.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
>>>I think the system of clicking away from menus to dismiss them seems to be a pretty decent paradigm.

I happen to agree.

But as you've clearly stated time and again, Jensen, do your comprehensive User Feedback stats and user testing support your hunch that this is intuitive to most people? :-)
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
We all jokingly complain that computers do exactly what we tell them to do and not what we want.

This click-absorbing feature (like auto-correct and extending mouse selections to entire words) is an attempt to make the program do what you meant rather than taking your mouse gestures too literally. This is a great thing if--and only if--it really does the right thing almost every single time.

I don't doubt that this feature (and many existing ones in Office) do exactly that for many, many users. The problem is that, for the rest of us, the behavior is counter-intuitive and frustration inducing. Not just sometimes, but every time. Unless those of us in the frustrated minority can disable these features, we become non-users.

If one feature satisfies 98% of your users at the cost of disenfranchising 2%, that's a huge success. But when you have a dozen features like that, you start to alienate a significant portion of the user base. Making these divisive behaviors optional becomes essential. My point in my earlier post was not to say that the feature was a bad idea. My intent, rather, was to emphasize how important it is that these mind-reading behaviors be optional.

Personally, I've never successfully produced a document more than four pages with Microsoft Word before giving up in frustration--angry, cussing, screaming frustration. The model simply doesn't work for me. Thank the FSM for alternatives.
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
An absolutely great detail. Have you considered porting the change to the Windows focus model? I mean, it is a behaviour many applications can benefit!

On the other side, a little request: How open/save dialogs will be in Office 12?
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
This whole post has been around how O12 will dismiss a gallery differently to "the standard Windows focus model".

Well, here's a weird one (this is what happens on my computer anyway):

Open "My Computer"
Switch to "Tile View" (not sure if this is required)
Click on an item (like Local Disk (C:))
Click on the "Help" menu
Now click on another item (like My Documents)
The focus moves to the second item

Now try the same thing again, but use the "Favorites" menu instead of the "Help" menu
The focus stays on the first item (i.e. the click is eaten)

So it looks like the "Windows Focus Model" isn't exactly predictable either
Anonymous
January 26, 2006
Hi Jensen,

Looking at the Beta 1 screenshots of Office 2007 on Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows, I really love the improvements made in the process.

One suggestion I have though, is to add a 'Read more help' hyperlink to the bottom of the Super Tooltips. It would open the general Help page about the feature the Super Tooltip is displayed for.

Keep up the good work!

Kind regards,

David van Leerdam
Anonymous
January 27, 2006
Jensenh wrote:

"Well, this will mark the end of my comments on this particular issue."

oh ok now let's see

did you adress any of the constructive comments on this thread? no.

Did you even care to answer to any counter critique of your methodology, your decision(s)? again no.

did this blog start a conversation between you and those whom do not agree with you? no.

this is not a blog. it's an advertisement.
Anonymous
January 27, 2006
To "AJR" and others:

Please be nice to Jensen. While I'm sure he's mature enough to take whatever you can dish out, I (and others) would prefer you didn't.

He is writing stuff that I want to read, and I hope he keeps 'happily' doing it for months more before it begins to feel like a chore to him. (they're more fun to read if they're fun to write)

Is Jensen a "marketing weasel", or is he gasp "advertising"?

No. At least not in my opinion; he's just a guy that's both excited about and proud of what he and his team have done.

Does Jense sound like he's in sales?
Sure, that's what happens when you're excited about something - used car salespeople emulate it.
I hope that one day all y`all have that excitement in your life about something and can relate.

AJR wrote:
"did this blog start a conversation between you and those whom do not agree with you? no."

I sure hope Jensen has better things to do than defend every blog post to every blog post poster. (what an awkward sentence :-)
Anonymous
January 27, 2006
Ultimately, I think that there will always be a trade-off between ease of use and control. The particular example that's bitten me in the past is "Smart Quotes" in Office. Try typing this:

1/"the dog"

You'll find that the first double quote is actually a closing quote rather than an opening quote, which looks a bit weird. The workaround is to type:

1/ "the dog"

and then go back and delete the space afterwards.

That's annoying, but I recognise that this is an unusual situation. The alternative is to use something like LaTeX, where I have complete control over the document, e.g. having separate keys for opening quotes vs closing quotes. However, that is also a lot harder to use.
Anonymous
January 27, 2006
"WHY ?
why do the want to make it go away? why did they open it in the first place? how can i prevent them from opening it if they don't need it?

Respectfully, sir, I wonder if these questions even sliped through your mind..
(I think theses question would help thee widen your approach, not necessarily their answers , if any)"

Did you even READ the article? The user CLICKED to open the gallery. You know, maybe to look at what was in it? Are you telling me you've never opened a menu and then wanted to dismiss it without doing an action? You have got to be kidding me.
Anonymous
January 27, 2006
Much of my life is spent in editing documents and email. Like everyone else, I am annoyed when the application selects more text than I intend, but I work around it. So, I type a little more than I need to because Word (or an application that mimics it) decides to ignore my fine motor control.

It frustrates me--most of the time. I am grateful that I can turn the feature off. But I know that for some of us, including me, it can occasionally save time, too.

I am a "selection reader" (thank-you Jensen!) so I click my documents A LOT. Does an extra click here and there bother me? Not usually.

If the extra click bothers you, perhaps you should pick up another of my habits. Hit the ESC key.
Anonymous
January 27, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 27, 2006
Alexandre-Jean, reading one Jef Raskin's book (however amazing and eye-opening it might generally be) does not a good UI designer make. Jef made some terrific points, but they were just one side of the coin. I find Jensen's approach much more balanced and more realistic.

JohnS, out of curiosity, why would you need a mouse pointer when you're typing?
Anonymous
January 27, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 27, 2006
@Bernt - to answer your question, I don't need the pointer when I type. I need it when I edit.

Point and click will always be the fastest way to move the cursor around the document. If I can't find the mouse pointer, I can't place the cursor where it needs to go next.

Did I mention that the "hide pointer" feature of Outlook 12 doesn't respect my global Mouse setting? I truly don't care if the mouse pointer hangs around while I type!

(On the other hand, a mouse pointer that MOVED when I typed...!? Yuck.)
Anonymous
January 29, 2006
(Just in case someone has enough patience to read all the way down here)

To the commenters who used the "steering wheel" analogy: modern cars actually don't respect the driver's "instructions" - in some conditions the wheels will turn and the engine will accelerate to match the drivers intentions rather than his instructions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Stability_Control

To John C. Kirk: before resorting to LaTeX, did you know you can force Word to use opening or closing quotes?
Just press Ctrl+` or Ctrl+' before entering the quote, and Word will insert an opening or closing quote, respectively.

To the frustrated text selectors: Alt+Selection will allow you to perform more percise selections, although you can't use this method across lines.
Anonymous
January 30, 2006
itsadok - thank you, I wasn't aware of that, but it's a useful option.
Anonymous
January 30, 2006
itsadok: Neat tip. Thanks.
Anonymous
January 31, 2006
Generally you should be praised for this bit of research and implementation.

Although I will use it as an example of why it was perhaps unwise to ever allow menus to be opened by just clicking them (rather than clicking-and holding them) in the first place.

With click-and-hold escaping from the menu is easy, you just release the mouse button.

With click-away you have to click something else, which makes the operation a nervous one for the user.

Your solution above is sensible and well researched, but I think at least 10% of the time the user will feel that the click shouldn't have been ignored and be confused.

Click-hold menus may have been a solution, but that depends on user-testing, maybe the average Windows user couldn't get used to them.

I agree click-and-hold menus are not perfect and have some accessability issues, but they are better for 80% at least, and it's an easy global Office option.

I'd be interested on your thoughts sir.
Anonymous
October 27, 2008
PingBack from http://mstechnews.info/2008/10/the-office-2007-ui-bible/
Anonymous
May 29, 2009
PingBack from http://paidsurveyshub.info/story.php?title=jensen-harris-an-office-user-interface-blog-obsession-to-detail
Anonymous
June 01, 2009
PingBack from http://woodtvstand.info/story.php?id=6222
Anonymous
June 08, 2009
PingBack from http://hairgrowthproducts.info/story.php?id=2003
Anonymous
June 14, 2009
PingBack from http://cutebirdbaths.info/story.php?id=1065
Anonymous
June 15, 2009
PingBack from http://unemploymentofficeresource.info/story.php?id=8425
Anonymous
June 16, 2009
PingBack from http://fixmycrediteasily.info/story.php?id=18066
Anonymous
June 16, 2009
PingBack from http://lowcostcarinsurances.info/story.php?id=3594

Share via

Obsession to Detail

Comments

Additional resources