MS Office UI peeked around versions 97-2003 or so. Everything in a menu, actions grouped / categorized so they were easier to discover. QUICKLY accessible by underlined keyboard combinations (alt+menu letter THEN item in menu letter) and with any actions that had a direct keyboard shortcut annotated. Everything easily discoverable.
Ribbons, I've no idea how the categorize what's popular or not, but 'related' things seem weaker to me, and the context switch price is much higher. Plus there's a need to hunt and kill with a mouse instead of direct with the keyboard.
My first job was on a particularly verbose set if software that's hard to learn. But, everyone that uses it does so daily and quickly become experts in their workflows.
Number of clicks was the #1 metric because a "pretty" UI would generally add steps and slow everyone down.
Verbose UIs are hard to learn but once learned have much better end-to-end workflows with fewer steps. Simple UIs hide information behind interactive (i.e. slow) workflows and universally hated by customers.
There's an old MIX08 video where some guys from MS actually talk through the design process and everything that went into it with a lot of depth as well as looking at alternative ideas and why they didn't work.
I think I've seen a video where they take the metrics they ask to collect (and everyone I've seen opts out) where the more buttons were clicked in office the bigger and further to the left they moved.
I find it weird based on my comment that windows and office is built around people who choose not to opt out either by ignoring the dialogs or by knowing what it's used for and hoping their metrics make some difference. Unfortunately I think it's mostly just people wanting to be a part of the product who really participate in user voice a lot of the time so we get weird design choices sticking like the mystery meat cut copy paste in windows 11
You can still access the items in the ribbons with Alt key sequences (although I agree that they've become far less discoverable), but the full-screen(!) "file menu" abomination that they added in later versions is even more hostile and offensive.
MS Office UI peeked around versions 97-2003 or so. Everything in a menu, actions grouped / categorized so they were easier to discover. QUICKLY accessible by underlined keyboard combinations (alt+menu letter THEN item in menu letter) and with any actions that had a direct keyboard shortcut annotated. Everything easily discoverable.
Ribbons, I've no idea how the categorize what's popular or not, but 'related' things seem weaker to me, and the context switch price is much higher. Plus there's a need to hunt and kill with a mouse instead of direct with the keyboard.