The next Office interface

I must confess that I am not an early adopter of software upgrades. I like a high degree of comfort with the applications I use frequently; I want to open it and do whatever I feel like doing without needing to figure out how. And most of the time the apps are already able to do what I need personally, so cool new features aren't often compelling to me.

I'm particularly ornery about Office in that way, especially Word. To be truthful, I was quite happy with Word 97 and have grudgingly adjusted to each revision since. So I'm trying to figure out just why I'm excited about Office 12 -- eager anticipation of a new version of Word is not my usual style.

Part of it is probably due to that "grudging" relationship...I'm not so attached to the latest version. And because I'm not so attached, the amount of change we'll get in Office 12 seems more like an adventure than an upheaval. But what really really has engaged me has been Jensen Harris's An Office User Interface Blog and the story he's telling around how they designed the interface and why they made certain decisions.

Knowing the "why" makes a big difference to me. Without the "why", I'm resistant even though it's always promised to be faster ~ easier ~ more efficient ~ your reason for getting up in the morning. Jensen tells me why they're using the new UI for specific products only. He tells me why icons vary in size. He tells me why they went with design galleries.

And the more I know about what they were thinking as they designed this UI, the more interested I am in playing with it.