Learning curve
May 2nd, 2006
An interesting video on how the user interface (UI) is going to work on the new Microsoft Office gave me a brief reminder of the pain we all go through whilst learning a new application.
For instance, I’ve been trying to persuade my Father to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox, and even though he understands all the benefits and can see that the basic features and controls are essentially identical, the small differences, the minor frustrations in the way it behaves and the different UI, have put him off.
This is the learning curve. You need to go through a worse place to get to a better place. You have to experience a drop in efficiency and productivity before the benefits of the better process kick in, and humans don’t like this.
No matter how better a place the destination is, people will tend to prefer their original tool. Inflexibility like this annoys me. Follow this line of thinking to the logical extreme and we’d still be banging rocks together. To me, it’s important to maintain an open mindedness, and be willing to learn. Other people – people like me – have put in a lot of effort to make their products better, and we owe it to ourselves to be receptive.
I’ve read quite a lot of negativity about the new Office toolbar, the “ribbon” featured in the video, but I for one am looking forward to trying it out.
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