[Sigia-l] office redesign (was: Nielsen: It's the end! (long))

[Karl Fast]

> The issue of "originality" is related to Jakob Nielsen's assertion
> that somehow the new Office changes the paradigm, in case you missed
> it. Otherwise, you are arguing against a strawman.

I didn't miss Nielsen's article. He does claim that the Office
redesign is a "new interaction paradigm" but he does not claim that
it is also original.

I'm distinguishing here between "original" and "new," at least how
Nielsen seems to be using the term new.

When Neilsen says that this "results-oriented" interaction paradigm
is "new", I interpreted him to mean "new to Office" and, by
extension, "effectively new to most people." Lots of people use
Office and most productivity applications follow the interaction
model that Office uses (and popularized, arguably). The Office
redesign will be the first time many people encounter this
interaction model. So in effect, it is new. At least for average
users. We're not exactly average users here.

So when Nielsen wrote about a "new interaction paradigm" I don't
think we should take that him to mean "The interaction designers at
Microsoft have developed a completely new, wholly original,
earth-shatteringly different way of interacting with office
documents." Well, I didn't.



-- 
Karl Fast
http://www.livingskies.com/