Reasons behind Office 2007 UI

Question

Since most of the people having to change from Office 2003 to 2007 in their office are confused, it amuses me if there is an objective reason for abandoning the good old interface of previous Offices.

It would also be nice to have some backing facts when people ask about rationale of change. For example I would be interested in:

• Was there a study telling that new users without any prior Office knowledge can adapt or use the new interface more efficiently?
• What are the strong points of the new UI from a designer perspective (which function is more accessible than before; which important pieces of information are more apparent? etc.)

Answer 1

For more answer than you probably want, you should read this excellent series of posts by an Office UI developer about why they decided to build a new UI for Office 2007. The basic reasons boiled down to:

• The old, toolbar-based UI was already overcluttered, and there was no place to put new features.
• It was difficult for users to discover the features that were already there.