Anyone interested in this at all, or desktop UI design in general, should really read Jensen Harris' fascinating series of blog posts that were written during the development of the Office 2007 UI:
They've got loads of detail on the thinking behind the new designs and give tons of examples of the work in progress - and go into the reasons for all the design decisions that went into the new ribbon UI. Well worth a read if you haven't done so before.
I guess I am the outcast - I spend 4-7 hours / day in excel / word / powerpoint, and love the new ribbon.
It took me quite a while to get used to - as I've been on office since the Windows 3.1 days - but once adapted I move through the applications quicker and have an easier time finding what I need.
The ribbon took a while to get used to when using Word 2007 for the first time. It involved a lot of Googling in finding most of the functionality that I wanted (I still do right now). I learned to appreciate the ribbon especially in reducing the number of clicks I need to do to accomplish the task, as opposed to having to dive into a bunch of menus (You could argue that I could have memorized the hotkeys, but my brain has only enough RAM to hold my Eclipse and Windows hotkeys =()
A better title would be "20 years of UI convention stuck in the back of my head and getting used to the ribbon takes time".
The piece contains nothing but subjective opinions and does in no way justify a conclusion that the Ribbon sucks. Yes, it is different. Yes, it took some time getting used to. Yes, I am more productive now.
The author (despite saying the opposite in the comments) clearly just wants things to remain the way they have always been and if the new Office 2007 UI is really that hard getting used to, why not just stick to Office 2003?
There are even free plugins from Microsoft to deal with the new Office fileformats.
In fairness, I think a case can be made that it's not a good idea to make too many radical changes to a UI design all at once. I'm not necessarily saying I agree with the author, but I can see where he's coming from.
With that said, I personally tend to think that the way of thinking above is the smart way to do things. On the other hand, you can't really innovate without being willing to try something stupid.
You can try stupid ideas. You should just avoid trying them with your cash-cow products. There is also the insight that focus groups and user behavior research can only go that far.
I was reading a very old article on the Acme editor/IDE/shell and one remark in it is very profound: When people become aware of the user interface, it's because it's distracting from the task. Ideally, users should not even be aware the UI is there.
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/tags/Why+the+New+UI_3F...
They've got loads of detail on the thinking behind the new designs and give tons of examples of the work in progress - and go into the reasons for all the design decisions that went into the new ribbon UI. Well worth a read if you haven't done so before.