[OT] Microsoft Office's New UI Blazes Some New Trails for Us

Judy Perry jperryl at ecs.fullerton.edu
Wed Oct 12 01:06:27 EDT 2005


But, respectfully, they all LOOK ALIKE.  You can spot them from a mile
away.  They are fake; they not infrequently have nothing to do with the
content which they exist presumably to advance.  They were chosen for
being the least obnoxious of the predetermined lot.  Modifying them
doesn't even come into play.

I understand that my philosophical rant is viewed as yet another exercise
at the troll gym, but I believe the point bears repeating:

These things are trumpeted as ends in themselves, not means. Master's
candidates in Reading are taught that PowerPoint is an end, not a means.
M.S. candidates in Instructional Design and Technology are taught likewise
about FrontPage.  They are told that these things gain them admission to
the digeratii confraternity.  Form does indeed trump substance.

Because the people for whom these things are developed are at the lower
rings of the technology food chain, they not infrequently spend  more time
figuring out how to use all the pretty pictures than they spend on the
content itself (your father, who I don't know, possibly notwithstanding).

For our US audience, consider this:

http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm

Judy

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005, Chipp Walters wrote:

> Charles, I respectfully disagree. Just like websites, many Office docs
> (including PowerPoint) are embellished by good design. My father is no
> designer, yet he works hard to create Word docs with his own look and
> feel focussed on usability. I'm always on the lookout for a really nice
> crisp proposal format for Word. And PowerPoint (another part of Office)
> even has a 3rd party market for 'new looks.'




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