In a new move by Microsoft, the American multinational tech giant is infusing Fluent Design system like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook to make them more enticing. These platforms will soon be getting new simplified ribbon which is smaller and easier to use. As of now, the changes are coming to Microsoft’s main desktop versions of Office, and it will soon be rolling out for the web version too.
The new changes from the Microsoft is an effort to make re-built its web version of Office to run faster. Also, the Office will include avatars for comments and separate colors for participants who will view and edit the same document.
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Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft Office and Windows Marketing, said in a press report, “Office is used by more than a billion people every month, so while we’re excited about these changes, we also recognize how important it is to get things right. To guide our work, we came up with “The Three Cs”—a set of guiding principles that we use as a north star. Because these principles will make this process feel different than any previous user experience update, we thought it would be useful to share them with you.”
According to Spataro, the three Cs” are Customers, Context, and Control. They are explained as under:
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Customers: Customer-driven innovation process is to co-create the design of the Microsoft Office apps. That process consists of three phases: initial customer research and analysis; concepting and co-creation; and validation and refinement.
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Context: The new designs will understand the context that you’re working in, so you can focus on the job at hand. That means surfacing the most relevant commands based on the work you’re doing and making it easy to connect and collaborate with others.
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Control: The apps often depends on specific parts of the user interface. So Microsoft is offering more control to users, allowing them to toggle significant changes on and off.
The new updates are exclusive to Office 365. Microsoft plans to deploy new designs to select customers in stages and carefully test and learn over the next several months.
The initial set of updates includes three changes:
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Simplified ribbon: A new, updated version of the ribbon is designed to help users focus on their work and collaborate naturally with others. People who prefer to dedicate more screen space to the commands will still be able to expand the ribbon to the classic three-line view.
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New colors and icons: Across the apps, users will see new colors and icons built as scalable graphics. These changes are designed to both modernize the user experience and make it more inclusive and accessible.
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Search: Search will become a much more important element of the user experience, providing access to commands, content, and people. With “zero query search,” simply placing your cursor in the search box will bring up recommendations powered by AI and the Microsoft Graph.
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