The workplace is indeed MS territory. The problem, as MCW points out:

"You want people to switch, create a better product. Give people a reason to change, other than political correctness."

This is similar to auto makers, seeing a Japanese import of four years ago -- then being competitive by putting out a four-year-old copy of a Japanese design. These products have to be original -- and original in ways current users want, but can't describe if you simply sit them down and ask them.

One flaw in MCW's comment -- he's talking to usability (folks) about this. It simply isn't about usability, but desirability. Usability does a game job at trying to understand desirability but isn't really about that sort of thing.

There may be an interaction designer with vision to come up with the next gen interface or office suite -- but he's sure to get pounded on for departing from usability dogma and many users will be just as skeptical, until they use the stuff.

Face it folks, we don't need a new word processor. We need a rethinking of what people do with the word processor and what they could be doing. Trouble is, many people in the software movement are so invested in being against Microsoft, they can't see actual users, or what could be. Being against Microsoft is not a strategy, nor is copying Microsoft's strategy for 1995.

Posted by: on May 13, 2003 11:49 PM

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I used Open Office for a time, but found it to be too buggy and not totally compatible with other people using MS Office to walk away with a completey satisfied user experience. However, it does not change my willingness to try open source software.

Posted by: daniel szuc on May 14, 2003 02:14 AM

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MCW DOES make several good points. Especially around here, we should be aware that usability and suitability for people's needs really does matter more than some nebulous "popularity among techies" or "IT political acceptability." Microsoft doesn't even necessarily make the best apps--but they're the standard, and people want to use whatever is standard (i.e., most straightforward and least complicated to work with).

As the IT economy continues to chug along, more and more of the user population will be made up of people who flat-out don't care about monopolistic practice, creativity, or even technology itself. All they want is to work with a standard, straightforward, easy-to-use tool and accomplish something, rather than tinker with nonstandard tweaks and patches. They want something that already works and either requires no support or has standard support available anywhere. For now, that means MS. And no degree of sputtering and fuming about "Microsoft is Evil" is going to impress them... if they're even aware of it.

Remember, AOL doesn't offer the most features, the most power, or the best tools for anything related to Internet activities... but it's still the most popular, because it's easy for non-techies to use with a minimum of effort. Usability predicts this. It's just that some few holdouts in the techie community still don't want to accept it.

Posted by: Calybos on May 14, 2003 08:18 AM

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Going back to a Microsoft product of a few years ago may be a good thing, since it reverses feature bloat.

Back in the dark days of the 80s, I loved Professional Write. It was a bare bones, fairly easy to use word processor. Even going to Wordperfect I was flooded with mystifying features that I had no interest in using or learning. So MS, in an effort to hide some of this complexity from the users, gave us collapsing menus that just baffle me as to what algorithm they use and get me horribly lost. But in Microsoft's defense, I can at least always count on MS software to follow Windows standards. Non-MS Commercial software just drives me crazy with lack of feedback (no hourglass when busy), lack of cut and paste functionality, etc. I think Microsoft will eventually get it. They do at least have Scott Berkun who I think is great.

Posted by: Ralph on May 14, 2003 12:30 PM

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Calybos said "people want to use whatever is standard (i.e., most straightforward and least complicated to work with)." and she/he was absolutely right.

People will gladly switch to a non-MS product when the annoyances from using it are less than Microsoft annoyances: money, registration, anti-piracy, format lock-in, and other stupid features.

For instance, I tell people Mozilla can stop pop-up ads, and THEN they are willing to try it instead of IE.

Unfortunately Open Office isn't even in the ball park yet. Soon, I hope to start taking part in Open Office testing and see if the developers are interested in fixing usability bugs.

-Jeff

Posted by: Jeff on May 14, 2003 01:33 PM

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