No Distaste for Paste (Why the UI, Part 7)

Part 6 of the Office 12 UI development ...

"Last Monday I issued a challenge: for readers to pick the most-used command in Microsoft Word 2003 and also the top 5 most-used commands (bonus points for having them in order.)

For me, the most interesting part was reading the justifications around the guesses. I'll reproduce a few of them here:

"Ctrl-Z Undo has *got* to be one of the top 5. I'm sure that bold/italic are in there too."

"...Save is very rarely used. Most end-users I've known are very hostile to the idea of saving frequently."

"I disagree with everyone. My mother can't cut and copy and paste, and she's probably much more of a typical user than any of us."

"normal ppl don't use Print Preview."

Now you have a pretty good idea what designing software at Microsoft was like before we collected data through the Customer Experience Improvement Program. Our internal discussions would have been peppered with the same wild guesses, justifications, and personal "anecdotes" served up as fact."   continued ...   (Via Jensen Harris)

Office 2003 Development.